Author: CNN

CNN
 — 

Delta Air Lines is easing off some recent changes to its SkyMiles loyalty program that sparked criticism from frequent flyers.

The changes are aimed at the most loyal travelers who have built up years of status at the airline as well as business travelers and Delta’s (DAL) credit card holders.

Fundamentally, Wednesday’s announcement keeps in place a significant overhaul announced just last month that transitioned the loyalty program from miles-based to spending-based. But the airline will make it easier for frequent flyers to reach certain rewards thresholds than the original changes.

Last month, Delta CEO Ed Bastian pledged modifications to the program, but downplayed customer frustrations. He said changes of some type were necessary. Other airlines also have spending-oriented loyalty programs.

“[E]veryone sees that the premium number of customers that we continue to build are in excess of the premium assets that we have to offer,” Bastian said.

The modifications lower the spending thresholds to earn the stepped levels of Medallion status and confer higher lifetime status to travelers who have accrued millions of flight miles.

The company also backed off some more stringent limits on accessing Delta’s airport lounges. Multiple visits over a 24 hour period, for example, will now count as a single visit credit. That will benefit frequent business travelers, an especially lucrative type of customer who have traveled less since the pandemic as meetings went virtual.

Credit card holders will also receive more visit credits than under the September program modifications.

Bastain last month acknowledged at a Rotary Club of Atlanta event that Delta “probably went too far” in overhauling its SkyMiles program and lounge access policy.

“Our team wanted to kind of rip the BandAid off and didn’t want to have to keep going through this every year with changes and nickel and diming and whatnot, and I think we moved too fast,” he said last month.

Bastian said Delta gained so many elite status holders that demand for premium services, including lounge access at airports, overwhelmed the company. Lounges became overcrowded, and the company couldn’t serve customers effectively, he said. Phone lines became jammed, and staff reported that they were inundated with requests for seat upgrades.

The new program are scheduled to go into effect in 2025.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries told CNN on Wednesday that his caucus has not yet made a decision on whether to back a Republican resolution that would assert that interim House Speaker Patrick McHenry has legislative power overseeing the chamber floor on a temporary basis.

Jeffries said the first thing Democrats are aiming to achieve is to stop Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan’s bid for the speakership.

The New York Democrat said that if Ohio Rep. Dave Joyce brings forward his resolution to empower McHenry and attempt to force a vote today, then Democrats would meet behind closed doors and decide whether to vote for it. Democratic votes are expected to be essential for the resolution’s chances of passage because the GOP is split on such a measure. 

“We haven’t had that discussion yet as a caucus,” Jeffries told CNN.

“The Republicans have to end this saga, as opposed to us having another futile effort to elevate and insurrectionists to lead the House of Representatives,” he added.

House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, told CNN that Democrats hope Republicans will come to them after Jordan’s second failed speakership bid.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also said that it’s up to Republicans to make the first move.

“They have their majority, they won the election. It’s their responsibility to elect their speaker,” the California Democrat said. “Our leader, Hakeem Jeffries, has been magnificent in saying there’s a path for us to work together. But clearly they have not taken advantage of that.”

Pelosi also called it a “real triumph for democracy” that Jordan lost the floor vote today.

CNN
 — 

A deadly blast at a hospital in Gaza hours before President Joe Biden was set to leave the White House for the Middle East set off a furious scramble inside his administration as the president’s advisers tried to ascertain who was responsible as street protests against Israel started raging across the Arab world.

Hours later, the president and his national security team were not confident enough to draw a final determination absolving Israel of responsibility. But the initial information they evaluated strongly suggested that the Israelis were not behind the strike, serving as a green light for Biden’s motorcade to roll out to Joint Base Andrews late Tuesday afternoon, sources familiar with the internal deliberation told CNN.

Had the early evidence examined by the president’s team pointed in the other direction, the White House would have been more inclined to reconsider the trip. But advisers were sensitive about reversing course mere hours after the trip was announced by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and in the end, they never came close to canceling the trip altogether, sources said.

“He had no choice. Once he decided to do it, he wouldn’t cancel it,” one source said, describing what was understood to be an extraordinarily high bar for canceling Biden’s visit, which only included a stop in Tel Aviv after Arab leaders canceled a planned summit with Biden in Amman, Jordan, in response to the hospital explosion.

The first public statement from the White House on the blast – which authorities in Hamas-run Gaza have said killed hundreds of civilians – condemned the civilian casualties and said the administration would continue studying the intelligence. En route to Israel on Air Force One, White House spokesman John Kirby would only go as far as to say, “We certainly recognize that they feel very strongly that – that this was not caused by them,” when asked whether the US would give Israel “the benefit of the doubt.”

Back at home, Biden’s team worked through the night, delivering an initial intelligence assessment in the early morning hours Wednesday, according to a source familiar. The president was briefed on that assessment, leading him to be explicit about who was to blame for the hospital strike: “Based on the information we’ve seen to date, it appears the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza.”

Officials told CNN separately that the initial evidence gathered by the US intelligence community suggests that the hospital strike came from a rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group and the National Security Council said in a statement on Wednesday that the US assesses that Israel was not responsible for the attack.

A casual, off-the-cuff reference to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the militant group the US believes is behind the hospital attack, as “the other team” appeared to undercut the diplomatic force established by the visit. Biden was more specific in later remarks, saying the hospital blast appeared to have been the result of an “errant rocket fire from a terrorist group in Gaza.”

A day after the explosion ripped through the Gaza hospital, Biden was back on Air Force One – after an expected 20 hours of travel for less than eight hours on the ground – with few tangible accomplishments to tout.

The postponement of the highly anticipated summit with Arab leaders in Jordan – where humanitarian issues were expected to be front and center – denied Biden a coveted opportunity to meet face-to-face with key partners in the region.

But during a refueling stop in Germany on the way home from Israel, Biden told reporters on Air Force One that he had spoken by phone with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Sisi, Biden said, had agreed to allow 20 trucks of humanitarian aid through the Rafah crossing. Former Ambassador David Satterfield, tapped to coordinate the US’ humanitarian efforts, will arrange the transport of the trucks, which Biden estimated could happen on Friday after potholes in the road are repaired.

Biden also told reporters there was virtually no pushback from regional leaders when the US urged them to allow aid into areas governed by Hamas. If Hamas confiscates the supplies meant for civilians, Biden said, the aid will end.

One senior US official said the cancellation of the Jordan visit was “definitely a setback,” but that the trip was still viewed as worthwhile because it “buys us some time” when it comes to a potential Israeli ground invasion of Gaza. The official said that the longer the Israelis hold off on a ground incursion into Gaza the better, because it would allow Israel to plan more strategically and not respond as emotionally to the horrors of October 7.

Advisers had appeared determined to reorient expectations before Biden had even arrived in Israel, saying that showing the powerful visual of American solidarity with Israel was a major goal of the trip. They described Biden and his longtime partner Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu standing shoulder-to-shoulder – and the US leader willing to take significant risks to back up his rhetorical warnings to any rogue actors in the region – as a critical deliverable.

One adviser put it simply: Biden sent a “strong message to Israel, which was the purpose of it.”

Video from an Al Jazeera news camera appears to show a rocket fired from a Gaza explosion in flight above Gaza City, which happened moments before an explosion is seen at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital. 

It is still not clear if they are related. 

CNN is continuing to conduct its own investigation into the blast at the hospital, and has not yet made any final conclusions.

CNN began reviewing this video Tuesday shortly after the explosion. Since then, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has pointed to this video as evidence that it was not responsible for the explosion at the hospital. 

CNN referenced nearby buildings in the video to geolocate them to an area just west of the hospital. 

The video was broadcast live from an east-facing Al Jazeera camera and captures the rocket trail rising into the air just a few seconds after it was launched. The time on the screen reads 6:59 p.m local time.

By geolocating where the Al Jazeera video was taken from, and the direction it’s capturing, CNN has determined the rocket was fired from an area south of Gaza City. The rocket can be seen in the video continuing to rise, until it suddenly veers straight up in the air.

The rocket then is seen making a sharp turn back toward the direction from where it was fired. A streak of fire is seen as the rocket flies significantly faster, continuing back toward the direction it was fired.  

Suddenly, the rocket is seen exploding mid-flight, in the air high above Gaza City. The rocket trail is no longer visible. From the video, it is unclear where the rocket ultimately fell.

Retired Col. Cedric Leighton told CNN after reviewing the video that “it’s consistent with a malfunctioning rocket.” 

Moments after the mid-air explosion, a flash of light is seen in the video in the east toward the ground. As the camera pans down, an explosion in another area of east Gaza City is seen. 

Then, a second flash of light — an explosion — is seen at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital complex.

There is only one rocket trail seen in the video. If the rising rocket was intercepted by another rocket, there would be another rocket trail. 

The Iron Dome system is programmed to only intercept rockets that are about to land in Israel. The location of this explosion is in the middle of Gaza and an intercept that far into Gaza would be unusual, according to CNN’s Jerusalem correspondent Hadas Gold.

A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

CNN
 — 

It’s a story President Joe Biden has told repeatedly in recent days, and it’s meant to demonstrate his long history supporting Israel.

Biden frequently recounts his meeting with Golda Meir, the trailblazing first and only woman to serve as Israel’s prime minister.

When they met in 1973, she was in her 70s, and Biden, then 30, was in his first year of a decades-long Senate career.

When he told the story Wednesday during an appearance in Tel Aviv with Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, he told it correctly, noting that it was just before the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

The important part of the story is the ending, which occurs as they’re standing shoulder to shoulder while a photograph is being taken. (Note: CNN’s photo editors were unable to find a photo of Biden and Meir standing together.)

BIDEN: Without her looking at me, she said to me, knowing I’d hear her, “Why do you look so worried, Senator Biden?” And I said, “Worried?” Like, “Of course, I’m worried.” And she looked at me and – she didn’t look, she said, “We don’t worry, senator. We Israelis have a secret weapon. We have nowhere else to go.”

Well, today, I say to all of Israel: The United States isn’t going anywhere either. We’re going to stand with you.

He told the same story earlier in the day, although he was off on a key detail. Speaking before he met with Israelis impacted by the terror attacks there, he said the meeting took place “just before the Six-Day War,” which occurred in 1967, before Meir was prime minister and before Biden was a senator.

But the ending of the story is always essentially the same. Here’s how he told it during the community event.

BIDEN: And we’re standing there having a photograph taken like you and I are standing, looking at the press. And she – without looking at me, she turned and she – like this, and she said, “You look worried, Senator.” I said, “I am.” She said, “Don’t worry, we Jews have a secret weapon in our fight: We have no place else to go.”

Well, the truth of the matter is, if there weren’t an Israel, we’d have to invent one. The truth of the matter is that I believe that yo- – as I went home and said – I got in trouble at the time, but it was true: You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist. You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.

He has conflated these two events – the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and the Six-Day War of 1967 – before, as CNN’s fact-check team reported in 2021.

Coincidentally, there’s a new movie version of Meir’s story, “Golda,” starring Helen Mirren and focused on the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

It is worth learning some of the history of these two conflicts because they still have importance today.

It was during the June 1967 Six-Day War that Israel launched a preemptive strike against Egypt, Syria and Jordan and seized control of the Gaza Strip, which had been under the control of Egypt, along with Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Syria’s Golan Heights and Jordan’s West Bank, including the entire city of Jerusalem.

During the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar with the aim of reclaiming land. The war led to an oil embargo by Arab nations against the US when the US supported Israel.

RELATED: Gaza explained

While the war ended in less than three weeks, it would take nearly nine more years for Israel to cede back control of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, a process that was completed in 1982 after the 1978 Camp David Accords led to a peace treaty between the countries.

Israel continued to occupy the Gaza Strip until 2005, when it withdrew soldiers and settlers. Jordan, which had once controlled the other Palestinian area, the West Bank, recognized Israel in 1994, and Israelis have continued to build settlements there.

Washington
CNN
 — 

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio has so far failed to clinch the House speakership in two rounds of voting.

On Tuesday, 20 Republicans voted against his candidacy – far more than the handful he could afford to lose given the party’s narrow majority in Congress.

Jordan – or any other GOP speaker candidate – can only afford to lose four Republican votes if all members are present and voting on the floor. A speaker needs a majority of the full House to be elected.

The congressman fared worse in a Wednesday vote, with 22 Republicans voting against him.

The House remains effectively frozen, as it has been without a speaker for two weeks after Kevin McCarthy’s historic ouster.

These are the House Republicans who voted against Jordan in each ballot:

1. Don Bacon of Nebraska voted for former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy

2. Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon voted for McCarthy

3. Anthony D’Esposito of New York voted for former Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York

4. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida voted for Steve Scalise of Louisiana

5. Jake Ellzey of Texas voted for Mike Garcia of California

6. Andrew Garbarino of New York voted for Zeldin

7. Carlos Gimenez of Florida voted for McCarthy

8. Tony Gonzales of Texas voted for Scalise

9. Kay Granger of Texas voted for Scalise

10. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania voted for Scalise

11. Jennifer Kiggans of Virginia voted for McCarthy

12. Nick LaLota of New York voted for Zeldin

13. Mike Lawler of New York voted for McCarthy

14. John Rutherford of Florida voted for Scalise

15. Mike Simpson of Idaho voted for Scalise

16. Steve Womack of Arkansas voted for Scalise

17. Ken Buck of Colorado voted for Tom Emmer of Minnesota

18. John James of Michigan voted for Tom Cole of Oklahoma

19. Doug LaMalfa of California voted for McCarthy

20. Victoria Spartz of Indiana voted for Thomas Massie of Kentucky

1. Bacon voted for McCarthy

2. Vern Buchanan of Florida voted for Byron Donalds of Florida

3. Buck voted for Emmer

4. Chavez-DeRemer voted for McCarthy

5. D’Esposito voted for Zeldin

6. Diaz-Balart voted for Scalise

7. Ellzey voted for Garcia

8. Drew Ferguson of Georgia voted for Scalise

9. Garbarino voted for Zeldin

10. Gimenez voted for McCarthy

11. Gonzales voted for Scalise

12. Granger voted for Scalise

13. James voted for Candice Miller of Michigan

14. Kelly voted for former House Speaker John Boehner

15. Kiggans voted for McCarthy

16. Lawler voted for McCarthy

17. LaLota voted for Zeldin

18. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa voted for Granger

19. Rutherford voted for Scalise

20. Simpson voted for Scalise

21. Pete Stauber of Minnesota voted for Bruce Westerman of Arkansas

22. Womack voted for Scalise

This headline and story have been updated with additional developments.

CNN
 — 

Two months after the state of Florida formally apologized to Leonard Cure for the 16 years he lost following a wrongful conviction for armed robbery, authorities say he was fatally shot Monday by a sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop just across the state line in Georgia.

“He and his family deserved better,” the Innocence Project of Florida said in a statement. “Lenny’s life mattered.”

Cure’s quest to rebuild his life after being wrongfully convicted in 2003 ended tragically on the shoulder of Interstate 95 in South Georgia on Monday morning.

On Wednesday, the Camden County, Georgia, sheriff’s office released body-worn and dash camera videos of the moments leading up to the shooting.

In the dash cam video, the deputy begins pursuing Cure with his sirens on after Cure’s vehicle passes his. The pursuit lasts about one minute and 20 seconds.

In the video, the deputy tells Cure to get out of his vehicle and says he pulled him over because he was speeding and driving recklessly. “You passed me going 100 miles per hour,” the deputy says.

“I’m not going to jail,” Cure says at one point. The deputy responds, “Yes, you are going to jail.”

The deputy orders Cure several times to put his hands behind his back, warning him he will be tased if he doesn’t. When Cure doesn’t comply, the deputy tases him.

While being tased, Cure turns and begins walking toward the deputy and grabs the Taser wire. The two engage in a physical struggle for about 20 seconds, during which Cure grabs the deputy’s throat and face. The deputy strikes Cure multiple times with a baton and Cure is heard saying, “Yeah, b*tch,” as the struggle goes on.

The deputy appears to fire his weapon and Cure falls to the ground. The gunshot is not audible in the videos.

The deputy is heard saying, “Camden, shots fired,” into his radio while he still commands Cure to stay down. Cure can be seen sitting up at times and flailing his arms. The deputy is then seen unpacking a first-aid kit and appears to begin administering aid until paramedics take over.

Cure later died, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.

The sheriff’s office said it released the videos to be transparent “regarding the actions that occurred” and to show the “confrontation and use of force.”

The GBI has said it “will conduct an independent investigation of the incident and turn its findings over to the Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office for review.”

CNN has reached out to representatives of Cure’s family.

Cure had been exonerated and released from prison in April 2020, after serving part of a life sentence for armed robbery in Broward County, Florida, court documents said.

“He came home and I was over the moon because I thought that he was finally free,” Cure’s mother, Mary, told reporters at a news conference earlier on Wednesday. “My baby was free. But the truth of the matter is that he never came home.”

At 53, Cure had reconnected with his family, gotten a steady security job and was quietly starting a new life in an Atlanta suburb, where he was using the compensation from his wrongful conviction and imprisonment to buy his first home, according to the Innocence Project.

“The Leonard we knew was a smart, funny and kind person,” Broward State Attorney Harold F. Pryor said of the man who was the first person exonerated by the office’s conviction review unit.

“After he was freed and exonerated by our office, he visited prosecutors at our office and participated in training to help our staff do their jobs in the fairest and most thorough way possible.”

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump and Florida Innocence Project Director Seth Miller joined members of Cure’s family at the news conference.

“He is someone who was failed by the system once and he has again been failed b2y the system,” Miller said Wednesday, referring to Cure. “He’s been twice taken away from his family.”

Cure’s family planned to view the body and dash camera footage, his brother, Michael Cure, said earlier. The family was expected to meet privately with investigators shortly before the video’s public release and, following the viewing, the family planned to meet with the district attorney’s office to discuss next steps and possible disciplinary action for the deputy involved, the brother said Wednesday.

The family says the sheriff’s office footage is not the only video of the incident.

Crump, the civil rights attorney, said Cure was on Facebook Live during the traffic stop, but said the video has been pulled off the social media platform.

Known to friends as Lenny, Cure was returning home to Fairburn, Georgia, after his visiting his mother when the the deputy stopped him, the Florida Innocence Project, which represented Cure, said in a statement.

“Sadly his life was cut tragically short,” Miller said.

In 2019, when the Broward State Attorney’s Office launched a conviction review unit, one of the first petitions it received was from Cure, who had previously lost four appeals for post-conviction relief, according to Broward County court records.

The Florida Innocence Project said its investigation found that an ATM receipt showed Cure was miles away at the time of the robbery he was convicted of committing.

“There is no technicality here – incontrovertible evidence of actual innocence, and it was the prosecutors who prosecuted him, that office, the same office that moved to vacate his conviction,” Miller said at Wednesday’s news conference.

The armed robbery took place in Dania Beach on November 10, 2003, when a man with a revolver forced his way into a Walgreens store in the early morning hours, according to the Florida Innocence Project. The suspect left the store with $1,700 in cash. The descriptions of the suspect provided by two store employees did not match.

The Florida Innocence Project said its investigation also concluded “a photo array shown to one of the victims contained multiple photos of Lenny and was therefore an unreliable, suggestive identification procedure.”

In 2004, a mistrial was declared after the jury was deadlocked. Weeks later, Cure was tried again and convicted. He was sentenced to life in prison for armed robbery with a firearm and assault with a firearm.

In April 2020, the conviction review unit modified Cure’s sentence to 16 years and he was released on time served, according to the Innocence Project.

Cure in August received $817,000 in compensation for his conviction and imprisonment, or roughly $50,000 for each year taken from his life. Crump on Wednesday called the compensation “a mere pittance.”

Pryor, the Broward State Attorney, recalled this week that Cure “would frequently call to check in on Assistant State Attorney Arielle Demby Berger, the head of the Conviction Review Unit, and offer our team encouragement to continue to do the important work of justice.”

CNN
 — 

Republican legislators in North Carolina on Wednesday released two redistricting proposals that could put at risk as many as four Democratic-held seats in the US House – in a move that could help determine which party gains the upper hand in the chamber after the 2024 elections.

The new maps are slated to be considered by the GOP-controlled state legislature as they work to settle on final lines. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper does not have veto power over redistricting legislation in North Carolina.

The latest effort was long expected to prove a windfall for the GOP, which holds supermajorities in the North Carolina legislature. The state’s current congressional delegation is split 7-7.

Both of the proposed maps released Wednesday would put three House Democrats in “almost impossible to win” districts, said Chris Cooper, a political science professor and redistricting expert at Western Carolina University.

The affected Democrats would be Reps. Jeff Jackson, who currently represents a Charlotte-area district; Wiley Nickel, who holds a Raleigh-area seat; and Kathy Manning, who represents Greensboro and other parts of north-central North Carolina.

One of the plans under consideration could also knock off a fourth Democrat because it would draw two of the state’s three Black House lawmakers – Reps. Don Davis and Valerie Foushee – into the same district. Under the other proposal, Davis would not face off against Foushee, but his seat would become more friendly toward Republicans while remaining competitive for both parties.

The North Carolina Democratic Party condemned the new map proposals Wednesday.

“Diluting our voices, specifically the voices of people of color, to entrench power is a manipulation of our democracy,” party Chair Anderson Clayton said in a statement.

Depending on the map lawmakers ultimately choose, Republicans would be favored to win as many as 11 of the state’s 14 congressional districts next year, experts say. The state, as a whole, remains more evenly divided politically, with North Carolina voters backing Donald Trump over Joe Biden by 1 point in 2020.

Republicans currently hold a narrow majority in the US House – a fact made conspicuous by their struggle to elect a new speaker. Around the country, from New York to Utah, politicians are engaged in pitched legislative and court battles over individual district lines as they jockey for any advantage. Earlier this month, a federal court approved a new map in Alabama, which created a new Democratic-leaning seat.

Changes to North Carolina’s congressional map, however, would not guarantee Republicans the edge in next year’s elections. In New York, for instance, Democrats could have the final say in map-drawing, potentially canceling out any GOP gains in the Tar Heel State.

Key wins by North Carolina Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections gave the party greater authority over the redistricting decisions now underway.

Notably, Republicans flipped North Carolina’s Supreme Court, whose members are chosen in partisan elections. Earlier this year, the court’s new GOP majority tossed out a 2022 ruling by the then-Democratic-leaning court against partisan gerrymandering.

A map that had been created after that 2022 ruling resulted in the state’s current evenly divided congressional delegation.

“The Republicans have the power to draw the lines,” said Cooper, the Western Carolina University political scientist. “They feel emboldened because they have a Republican majority in the state Supreme Court, and these maps – at least at this early stage – seem to reflect that.”

Committee hearings are planned for Thursday with final votes in the North Carolina legislature expected next week.

New York
CNN Business
 — 

Former University of Pennsylvania trustee Vahan Gureghian is calling for Liz Magill, the Ivy League school’s president, to step down and warned the backlash from powerful donors will likely get worse over a growing uproar over how the school has dealt with allegations of antisemitism on campus.

“She is negligent and not really up to the job of being the president of one of the eight or so most elite universities in the world,” Gureghian, a charter-school magnate, told CNN in a phone interview on Wednesday.

A growing list of high-profile donors have pulled their funding from Penn, arguing Magill and her administration did not go far enough to condemn the Palestine Writes Literature Festival that took place last month on campus. UPenn leaders acknowledged that event included speakers with a history of making antisemitic remarks, issuing a statement ahead of the festival condemning antisemitism broadly – though not the festival specifically.

In the wake of Hamas’ attack on Israel, donors’ displeasure increased rapidly, as they argued the university wasn’t sufficiently battling antisemitism on campus.

The call for Magill’s resignation comes after Gureghian himself stepped down from the board of trustees late last week in protest of the school’s response to a Palestinian literature festival that took place last month, before the terror attacks by Hamas against Israel.

As a trustee, Gureghian was among the people in charge of ultimately approving Magill to become the university’s ninth president last year.

“It’s a gigantic operation. Some people aren’t up for that job. Maybe we picked the wrong person. Maybe it’s time for her to go. I think it is,” Gureghian, who is the founder and CEO of charter school operator CSMI Consulting Group, told CNN.

Gureghian added that he doesn’t know if Scott Bok, who chairs the school’s board of trustees, should stay on either because he bears responsibility, too.

The Palestine Writes festival has proven to be a lightning rod for criticism at one of America’s most prestigious universities and the stated catalyst for a series of prominent backers to halt their financial support.

Billionaire Marc Rowan, former US Ambassador Jon Huntsman, venture capitalist David Magerman and hedge fund billionaire Cliff Asness have all vowed to close their checkbooks.

“People are just going to turn that spigot off. That’s a major, major thing for a university of this stature,” Gureghian said. “You’re going to see day after day after day major donors pulling their support at the University at Pennsylvania. It is a situation where she can’t survive this.”

The tipping point for Gureghian was billionaire Ronald Lauder’s letter, first reported by CNN, to Magill earlier this week. In that letter, Lauder, a prominent Penn backer, revealed he made a special visit to Philadelphia to try to persuade Magill to cancel the Palestine Writes festival and two subsequent phone calls in that effort.

“I told you that those invited to the event had a history of not just strong anti-Israel bias, but outright antisemitism. You were already aware of much of this,” Lauder wrote in the letter.

Gureghian argues Magill should have gone to the board of trustees at that point to seek their advice on whether to hold the Palestine Writes festival.

“It was a lay-up for her to find out if this was going to be okay. You don’t need to be president of the year to figure that out,” Gureghian said, adding that Magill should “for sure” resign. “Liz has been around the block. This is not her first rodeo. But apparently Liz is not ready for this job.”

Magill was not only facing pressure from Lauder and other opponents of the Palestine Writes festival. There were also vocal backers of the event, including even some members of the Jewish community.

Days before the festival was scheduled to begin on Sept. 22, dozens of Jewish members of the UPenn community wrote to Magill to express their “enthusiasm” for the event and even criticized her condemnation of antisemitism. Three dozen members of the UPenn faculty also wrote a letter in student newspaper The Daily Pennsylvanian to support the Palestine Writes festival.

Organizers of the Palestine Writes festival denied that it embraced antisemitism, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian.

Asked about Gureghian’s criticism, UPenn referred CNN to a statement Magill issued on Tuesday saying the school has a “moral responsibility to combat antisemitism and to educate our community to recognize and reject hate in all its forms.”

In a new message on Wednesday, Magill addressed campus demonstrations that are coming at a time when “many members of our community are fearful and experiencing tremendous pain.”

“Hateful speech has no place at Penn. No place. I categorically condemn hateful speech that denigrates others as contrary to our values,” Magill said. “In this tragic moment, we must respect the pain of our classmates and colleagues and recognize that our speech and actions have the power to both harm and heal our community. We must choose healing, resisting those who would divide us and instead respect and care for one another.”

Bok, who chairs UPenn’s board of trustees and serves as CEO of investment bank Greenhill & Co., said in a statement on Monday that dozens of current and former UPenn trustees gathered for a pair of virtual conversations in recent days to discuss the situation and hear from Magill.

“The unanimous sense of those gathered was that President Magill and her existing University leadership team are the right group to take the University forward,” Bok said.

CNN
 — 

The US government is receiving dozens of reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena, more commonly known as UFOs, each month, according to the director of the office established to investigate the incidents, with the potential for “hundreds, if not thousands” more reports expected in the near future.

The office has received approximately 800 reports of unidentified objects to investigate as of this past April, up from 650 reports in August 2022, Sean Kirkpatrick, who heads the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office at the Pentagon told CNN. Nearly all of the new reports refer to objects observed in the air; only one comes from a maritime sighting.

The vast majority are benign objects, such as balloons or drones, but some may be the result of America’s adversaries trying to spy on the US, said Kirkpatrick.

“There are some indicators that are concerning that may be attributed to foreign activity, and we are investigating those very hard,” said Kirkpatrick, speaking exclusively to CNN ahead of the release of the annual report on unidentified aerial phenomena.

The report, released on Wednesday, said the object sightings may represent an issue for flight safety. Most sightings and observations come from near restricted military airspace, the report found, likely a result from the additional sensors and radars around the facilities.

A portion of the increase in reports comes from the Federal Aviation Administration, which monitors airspace around US airports starting to provide information to the Pentagon.

About half of the reports contain enough data that they can be ruled out as “mundane things,” such as errant balloons or floating trash, Kirkpatrick said, but 2-4% are truly anomalous and require further investigation.

The report said only “a very small percentage” of observations have “interesting” signatures, such as high-speed travel or “unknown morphologies.”

Kirkpatrick’s office has transferred “a lot” of cases to law enforcement for further investigation and, if necessary, counterintelligence. But some sightings could potentially be foreign adversaries spying on the United States, like the Chinese spy balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina in February.

The annual report on UAPs, put together by the Defense Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said, “Although none of these UAP reports have been positively attributed to foreign activities, these cases continue to be investigated.”

Asked if the Pentagon could definitively identify a sighting of an unidentified object as belonging to a foreign adversary, Kirkpatrick said that his office is “looking at some very interesting indicators of things, and that’s about all I can tell you.” But the office, which has more than 40 employees and is expected to grow, can’t say that for sure yet.

“There are ways to hide in our noise that always concern me,” Kirkpatrick said, referring to the extraneous readings picked up by US radars and other sensors. “I am worried from a national security perspective.”

But Kirkpatrick could offer few details about why certain reports raised suspicions about foreign involvement.

“It could just be a foreign entity. It could be a hobbyist. It could be anybody,” he said. “And those are the things that we have to look into.”

Ever since the Biden administration established a formal office to investigate reports of UAPs, the subject has garnered massive public attention, fueled by its inextricable link to UFO sightings. A July hearing in Congress on the matter drove the interest even higher, as David Grusch, a former Air Force intelligence officer, alleged that the government has covered up its research into the sightings, a claim Kirkpatrick flatly denied.

But Grusch went much further, even as he acknowledged that he had no first-hand knowledge and was only told things by others, asserting that the US government had unidentified alien objects in its possession and the “non-human” pilots of the craft.

Kirkpatrick dismissed the sensational claims, saying he has “no evidence that suggests anything extraterrestrial in nature.”

“If anybody thinks that they know where those things are, they should be coming to talk to us,” said Kirkpatrick. “That’s why we have set up this entire architecture for people to securely come in and talk to us.”

The Pentagon is preparing for a flood of new reports as it readies two new portals for submissions: one for historical sightings from current or former government employees and contractors and a second for public submissions of new reports.

The portal for historical sightings is set to open sometime in the next month or so, Kirkpatrick told CNN. Its purpose is to validate or refute past reports of unidentified objects, checking them against other reports and cataloging them for possible further analysis.

It is the opening of the public portal, still several months away, that Kirkpatrick says could flood the system with “hundreds, if not thousands” of new reports to sort through. Even so, Kirkpatrick has a plan for his office, which involves a system that will automatically match known objects to public reports, allowing the government to dismiss sightings of identified bodies. But the reports of unknown objects could prove to be valuable, Kirkpatrick says.

“If it’s a foreign adversary and I got 100,000 people with cell phones who can collect it, well now it makes it really hard for the foreign adversary to do anything,” Kirkpatrick says.

Asked if the US government should have created an effort to handle unidentified objects earlier, Kirkpatrick demurred. He said the new office came “probably at the right time for the right reasons.” But in an acknowledgment of the interest and the mystery of the subject matter, he added, “I think the government as a whole – that includes Congress – should have probably addressed some of this years ago in a more directed fashion.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.