Author: CNN

CNN
 — 

A man accused of bringing guns to the Wisconsin Capitol grounds twice in a day this month has been charged with a misdemeanor count of carrying a firearm in a public building, records show.

Joshua Pleasnick, 43, was arrested the afternoon of October 4 after he entered the state Capitol building openly carrying a handgun and requesting to speak with Gov. Tony Evers, according to a charging document filed Monday. After posting bail, he returned that night with an AK-47-style rifle and was detained, the Wisconsin Department of Administration said at the time.

Pleasnick is expected to appear in court Thursday, jail records show. He remains in custody and is barred from possessing a firearm or returning to the Capitol building, Wisconsin Department of Administration spokesperson Tatyana Warrick said in an email.

Pleasnick faces the misdemeanor charge in connection with his first arrest, the charging document states.

“Wisconsin statutes are clear. Open carry of a firearm is legal and just openly carrying a firearm alone is not grounds for a disorderly conduct offense,” Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne told CNN. “Open carry is not permitted in public buildings which are posted as prohibiting firearms. It appears the second time Mr. Pleasnick had contact with law enforcement their detention of him was due to a safety concern vs. a violation of a Wisconsin Statute.”

When Pleasnick first entered the Capitol building around 2 p.m., he was shirtless and had a small dog on a leash as he walked past the checkpoint gate and tried to go to the governor’s office and speak with Evers, the document says. A State Capitol Police officer stopped Pleasnick and asked him to step behind the gate and fill out a form to meet the governor, the document says.

Pleasnick was openly carrying a holstered handgun, the complaint says. “At no time did he attempt to brandish the firearm,” it notes.

When officers informed Pleasnick he was not allowed to carry the weapon openly inside the Capitol, Pleasnick replied “he would not comply with that rule,” the complaint says. Pleasnick was then arrested.

Pleasnick told police he was not aware that open carry is banned in the Capitol, according to the complaint.

“I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to take a firearm into the Capitol, for that I am guilty,” Pleasnick told the officer, according to the document.

Pleasnick told the officer he wanted to speak to the governor about his concern that men who have been abused by women are not taken seriously by police or the justice system – something he had personally experienced, the document says. Pleasnick said he carried the gun for self-protection because he feared his ex-girlfriend may try to harm him, it says.

“On October 16, 2023, the Dane County District Attorney’s Office issued a criminal complaint for Mr. Joshua Pleasnick for unlawfully carrying a firearm into a public building. This charge stems from the original October 4 incident when Mr. Pleasnick entered the State Capitol building while openly carrying a holstered firearm,” Warrick said, adding, “Pleasnick was released from his initial confinement on the evening of October 17.”

After he posted bail, Pleasnick returned to Capitol grounds around 9 p.m. – after the building had closed to the public – armed with a loaded AK-47-style rifle and repeating his request to see the governor, the state administration department said. Police also found a collapsible police-style baton in his backpack, which is illegal to carry concealed without a permit, the department said.

Officers then took Pleasnick into “protective custody” for a psychiatric evaluation after he made a “concerning statement,” the administration department said.

“Shortly after his release, Mr. Pleasnick was arrested for the violation of Wisconsin concealed carry law relating to the original October 4 incident,” she added. “He was then taken to the Dane County Jail and he remains in custody.”

The complaint does not detail the second incident during which Pleasnick was taken into custody.

CNN has sought further comment from Pleasnick, who said he has not yet obtained an attorney.

Incidents like this always prompt reevaluations of security policies, Evers told reporters earlier this month, adding he was OK.

“The Capitol police took control of the situation and so it’s over, but it’s always something that … you don’t want to see happen, but that’s why we have good people in the police departments and the Capitol Police and the state patrol, they’re doing their great work,” the governor said.

CNN
 — 

The United States has vetoed a draft resolution at the UN Security Council which called for a humanitarian pause in besieged Gaza – sparking more criticism of political paralysis in the powerful global body.

The brief draft resolution, proposed by Brazil, condemned the October 7 terror attacks in Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas, which killed over 1,400 people, and urged the release of hostages taken.

It also called on all parties to comply with international law and protect civilian lives in Hamas-controlled Gaza amid a ferocious retaliation by Israeli warplanes. The international community should engineer “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting to allow for aid delivery, it said.

Twelve of the council’s 15 members approved the draft on Wednesday, with the UK and Russia abstaining, and a US veto.

Speaking after the vote, US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield explained that the US wanted more time to let American on-the-ground diplomacy “play out.” The US had previously delayed voting on the resolution.

Thomas-Greenfield also criticized the text for failing to mention Israel’s right to self-defense – a point later echoed by the British representative Barbara Woodward.

Since the Hamas attacks, Israel has been bombarding Hamas-controlled Gaza with airstrikes. It has also cut off the enclaves’ 2 million people from supplies of basic necessities, including food, water and electricity.

More than 3,000 people have died in the Israeli strikes – including more than 1,000 children and dozens of aid workers – and UN experts are warning of a widespread disaster if water and electricity are not restored.

The US, Egypt, Israel and UN have been negotiating for days over the possible opening of a humanitarian corridor that would bring aid in through the Rafah border crossing, which connects Gaza to Egypt.

In New York, several members of the Security Council expressed disappointment and frustration over the failure of a joint statement on the importance of aid and civilian protection.

“Sadly, very sadly, the council was yet again unable to adopt a resolution on these conflicts. Again, silence and inaction prevailed. To no one’s true long-term interest,” UN Ambassador to Brazil Sergio Franca Danese said following the veto.

The Security Council “missed an opportunity,” French representative Nicolas de Rivière told press after the vote.

“We deeply regret that this text has been rejected,” he said.

“We totally recognize the right of Israel to defend itself. And on the other hand, protecting civilians, granting humanitarian access, calling for the full respect of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions – there is absolutely no contradiction. This is basically what this resolution was doing,” he added.

Speaking to the council, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador Lana Nusseibah said the resolution was not a “perfect text” but that her country had voted for it “because it clearly states basic principles which must be upheld and which this Council is obliged to reinforce and uphold.

She also expressed hope that US diplomatic efforts in the region “help lead us all off this brink that we are edging towards.”

The Security Council is the UN’s most powerful body, but is frequently hampered by the veto power held by each of its five permanent members. Recent draft resolutions have also been stymied by Russian vetoes when it comes to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia last week proposed another resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza that also failed to pass.

CNN
 — 

President Joe Biden’s pick for ambassador to Israel, former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, defended his record related to the Iran nuclear deal during his confirmation hearing Wednesday and made clear that he believes the US is dealing with “an evil, malign government that funds its evil and malign activities first.”

Lew was grilled by Republican members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, particularly over questions related to his role in lifting sanctions against Iran as part of the 2015 nuclear deal. He was also pressed on whether the Biden administration can prevent Tehran from using funds returned by the US with the lifting of additional sanctions for malign activities.

Lew played a key role in the original Iranian nuclear deal in 2015, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fiercely opposed, saying it gives Iran a clear path to an atomic arsenal. Former President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, a move that was supported by Israel.

Iran “is not a rational economic player” and will continue to prioritize funding its malign activities over providing humanitarian support for its own people – regardless of sanctions imposed by the US, Lew told lawmakers.

“It’s not a pure economic question. It’s a question of who are we dealing with,” Lew told Senate lawmakers when asked if there is any way for the Biden administration to guarantee Iran will only use additional funds returned with the lifting of sanctions only for humanitarian purposes.

“It’s not a tradeoff between guns and butter. Guns come first,” he said. “You are dealing with an evil, malign government that funds its evil and malign activities first.”

Lew also said that the vast majority of money returned to Iran with the lifting of sanctions is used for humanitarian purposes and any misappropriated funds “won’t change the thrust of what they do.”

“When Iran gets access to food and medicine for its people, that’s food and medicine it otherwise would not have. I can’t say that there’s no leakage,” Lew added.

“To the extent that there’s leakage, it won’t change the thrust of what they do. Sadly, supporting terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah – that’s not very expensive. … Under maximum pressure, (Iran) still was doing their malign activities,” Lew said.

Lew also said Wednesday he is “proud” of Biden for “taking the stand that he’s been taking” following the hospital blast in Gaza, referring to the president’s recent comments asserting he believes Israel was not behind the explosion as Hamas initially claimed.

“I’m proud to see President Biden taking the stand that he’s been taking. And even this morning, when I heard his comments on the horrible bombing of a hospital in Gaza, you know, he was not giving into disinformation. He was shooting straight in the fog of the moment. You don’t have perfect information. And he said, from everything he sees, it was not Israel that did it.”

Prior to Wednesday’s hearing, some Republicans were already signaling that they may slow down consideration of Lew’s nomination on the Senate floor.

Several top GOP senators have expressed their concerns over Lew’s involvement in the Iran nuclear deal during the Obama administration, arguing that although it’s important to confirm a new ambassador as quickly as possible, given the conflict in the region, he may not be the right man for the job.

Sen. Marco Rubio, a senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, “I think we should have an ambassador in every country, it has to be the right person. In the case of Mr. Lew, I have real concerns that he has misled and lied to Congress in the past, in terms of some of the financial arrangements that were made under the Obama Administration.”

Another Republican on the panel, Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, told CNN, “We have to have his hearing, but I have some very serious concerns about him and his involvement with the Iran nuclear deal, a deal that in my opinion is giving nuclear weapons to Iran, facilitating that. So, we’ll have to see what he says in there and take it from there.”

While Lew only needs 51 votes to be confirmed, assuming his nomination is advanced by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, any one senator can slow the process down on the Senate floor. Senate Minority Whip John Thune, the no. 2 Republican in the Senate, told CNN’s Manu Raju on Monday there is “a lot of resistance” to Lew’s nomination.

Another top Republican in leadership, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, told CNN on Tuesday that he believes one of his colleagues may place a hold to delay Lew’s confirmation. “I would expect so,” he said, though he would not say who he thinks would take that step.

Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican who has attacked Lew as an “Iran sympathizer who has no business being our ambassador,” indicated on Tuesday that he may block a speedy confirmation of Lew.

“Certainly Jack Lew will have to go through all the procedural steps that we go through for any random district judge or assistant administrator of the EPA,” he said. When asked if they would have unanimous consent to skip some of those steps, as the Senate often does, Cotton replied, “We’re not going to skip those for a soft-on-Iran ambassadorial nominee to Israel in the middle of a war with Iran’s proxies in Israel.”

Senate Democrats have pushed back, saying that Lew is qualified and that confirming a new ambassador to Israel should be one of their highest priorities.

Senate Foreign Relations Chair Ben Cardin told reporters on Tuesday, “He’s highly qualified, he’s the right person for the right job, but we want to be most effective as possible in helping Israel to deal with the hostages, to deal with the humanitarian needs, to deal with normalization.”

The Maryland Democrat added, “We need a confirmed ambassador in Israel as soon as possible.”

However, Republicans remain unconvinced. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a member of Senate GOP leadership, said that he is also “very troubled by some of what Sen. Cotton addressed in terms of his appeasement, and, frankly, the appeasement approach of the Biden administration and the Obama administration. Iran is still the number one state sponsor of terrorism.”

He continued, “Proxies, like Hezbollah and Hamas are determined to wipe Israel off the map. And they’ve pretty much circumvented sanctions, which were supposed to have been imposed by the Treasury Department under Jack Lew, and selling oil on the open market and relieving some of the pressure that was there to get them to stop their nuclear program.”

Iran is the main backer of terror groups Hamas, based in Gaza, and Hezbollah, based in Southern Lebanon.

Cotton argued that rejecting Lew will send a powerful signal.

“I know Democrats are saying that we need to confirm Jack Lew quickly to show our support for Israel. I would say it’s the exact opposite. We need to defeat Jack Lew’s nomination to show that we have a new approach to Iran,” he said in an interview on Fox News.

In a post on X, Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri agreed.

“As Obama’s Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was a key figure in the disastrous Iran Nuclear Deal. Iran is the chief sponsor of Hamas. Jack Lew has no business being the US Ambassador to Israel,” Schmitt wrote.

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN
 — 

Apple

(AAPL) quietly announced its next-generation Pencil that works with iPads and now includes USB-C charging.

The change comes nearly a month after Apple retired its Lightning charger, a milestone moment toward universal charging amid pressure from EU regulators.

Like previous models, the third-generation Apple Pencil is intended for taking notes, sketching and marking up documents. It also supports the hover feature, which allows users to preview and switch between different tools and app controls, when used with a 12.9-inch iPad Pro 12.9-inch (6th generation) and 11-inch iPad Pro (4th generation). The price is $79, down $20 from the second-generation Apple Pencil and $50 less than the original.

The biggest change to the latest model comes to the charging system, which is noteworthy not only because the company has been resistant to making the switch for years but because it’s about to make charging that much easier for its customers.

At its iPhone 15 event in September, the company announced all of its next-generation smartphones and new AirPods Pro will launch with USB-C charging. Apple previously switched its iPads and MacBooks to USB-C charging, but the push to finally add it to iPhones came less than a year after the European Union voted to approve legislation to require smartphones, tablets, digital cameras, portable speakers and other small devices to support USB-C charging by 2024.

The first-of-its-kind law aims to pare down the number of chargers and cables consumers must contend with when they purchase a new device and to allow users to mix and match devices and chargers even if they were produced by different manufacturers. In doing so, however, Apple will give up control of its wired charging ecosystem, and identifying good chargers from bad ones won’t be obvious to many consumers.

Although Apple does not break out its Pencil sales numbers, David McQueen, a director at ABI Research, estimates about 42 million have been sold since it launched in 2015, considering 420 million iPads have been sold since then (assuming 10% or fewer of these consumers have bought an Apple Pencil).

“I’d have to think it’d be this low because of its relatively high price, high-end use case, and the availability of much cheaper alternatives that are capable of working with iPad,” he said.

CNN
 — 

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan again failed to win the House speaker’s gavel in a second vote on Wednesday, faring worse than he did during the first round of voting one day earlier. The loss raises serious questions over whether the Ohio Republican has a viable path forward as he confronts steep opposition and the House remains in a state of paralysis.

Despite the defeat, Jordan has vowed to stay in the race. The House is expected to hold a third speaker vote on Thursday at noon ET. Without a speaker, the chamber is effectively frozen, a precarious position that comes amid conflict abroad and a potential government shutdown next month.

The conservative Republican’s struggle to gain traction has also highlighted the limits of Donald Trump’s influence in the speaker’s race after the former president endorsed Jordan.

As pressure grows on Republicans to find a way out of the leadership crisis, some are pushing to expand the powers of the interim speaker, GOP Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, though such a move would not be without controversy and has divided Republicans.

During the first round of voting on Tuesday, 20 House Republicans voted against Jordan. On Wednesday, that number rose to 22, showing that the opposition against the candidate has grown. There were four new Republican votes against Jordan and two that flipped into his column. Given the narrow House GOP majority, Jordan can only afford to lose a handful of votes and the high number of votes against him puts the gavel far out of reach.

Following his second defeat on the floor, Jordan indicated that he is dug in on pressing ahead.

“We don’t know when we’re going to have the next vote but we want to continue our conversations with our colleagues,” he said.

“We’ll keep talking to members and keep working on it,” he added.

Jordan is a polarizing figure in the speaker’s fight, a complicating factor in his effort to lock down votes. He is a staunch ally of Trump, has a longstanding reputation as a conservative agitator and helped found the hardline House Freedom Caucus. As the chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, he has also been a key figure in House GOP-led investigations.

It took former Speaker Kevin McCarthy 15 rounds of voting in January to secure the gavel. But Jordan faces an uphill climb amid the deep divisions within the House GOP conference and the resistance he faces.

As the speaker battle drags on, tensions and frustration have risen among House Republicans. Some of the lawmakers who have voted against Jordan in the speaker’s race have railed against what they have described as a pressure campaign against them.

Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas derided what he called the “attack, attack, attack” tactics of Jordan allies against his Republican opponents.

“Frankly, just based on what I’ve been through – I can only speak to myself and what my staff has been through over the last 24 or 48 hours – it is obvious what the strategy has been: Attack, attack, attack. Attack the members who don’t agree with you, attack them, beat them into submission,” he said.

GOP Rep. Don Bacon’s wife received anonymous text messages warning her husband to back Jordan. Bacon has been a vocal holdout against Jordan and was one of the 20 Republican members that did not back Jordan on the floor in Tuesday’s vote.

“Your husband will not hold any political office ever again. What a disappointment and failure he is,” read one of the messages sent to Bacon’s wife and obtained by CNN through Bacon.

Bacon’s wife responded to that text saying, “he has more courage than you. You won’t put your name to your statements.”

GOP lawmaker voted for a congressman he didn’t want to be Speaker. Hear why

Opponents to Jordan’s bid so far have included centrist Republicans concerned that the face of the House GOP would be a conservative hardliner as well as lawmakers still furious at the small group of Republicans who forced out McCarthy and then opposed House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s bid for the gavel.

Scalise initially defeated Jordan inside the GOP conference to become the speaker nominee, but later dropped out of the race amid opposition to his candidacy.

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

New York
CNN
 — 

Tesla reported a drop in third-quarter earnings as the electric vehicle maker fell short of Wall Street expectations.

Tesla reported adjusted earnings of $2.3 billion in the quarter, or 66 cents a share, down 37% from a year earlier and the smallest profits it reported in two years. Analysts surveyed by Refinitiv had forecast a slowdown in earnings but still expected it to report earnings of 73 cents a share.

The company also missed on third-quarter revenue of $23.4 billion, up 9% from a year earlier but short of the $24.1 billion forecast by analysts. Tesla has been repeatedly cutting the prices of its vehicles to boost sales demand in the face of growing electric vehicle competition from established automakers.

The company once again reported thinner profit margins, even if it is still more profitable than traditional automakers. Its gross margin fell to 17.9%, down 7 percentage points from a year earlier. And the more closely watched adjusted automotive margin, excluding sales from regulatory credits, fell nearly 11 percentage points to about 18%.

“Clearly not a roses and rainbows quarter for Tesla as the company missed the street across most metrics,” said Dan Ives, tech analyst at Wedbush Securities and a bull on Tesla stock. “Price cuts have hurt margins and now the focus is when do the price cuts end?”

But the company said that it has had success cutting the cost of each vehicle, although it said costs are higher at its new factories in Texas and Germany than its established plants in California and China.

“We have implemented necessary upgrades in [the third quarter] to enable further unit cost reductions. We continue to believe that an industry leader needs to be a cost leader,” said the company’s statement.

The company said its profits and sales were both hurt as it temporarily shut several production lines for upgrades, which it said led to a sequential decline in production volumes, as well as higher interest rates, which raised the cost of ownership for many buyers.

But it said it is still on track to deliver 1.8 million vehicles for the year. That target would require its fourth quarter sales to be up 17% from what it achieved in the last three months of 2022.

Tesla also said it still expects to begin delivery of the long-delayed Cybertruck pickup by the end of this year. Soon after the earnings report, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted out that first deliveries of the Cybertruck are now scheduled for November 30.

But Musk cautioned it will take some time before the company is able to make money on the Cybertruck, given how different the truck is than what Tesla has made before now.

“I think it is our best product ever,” he said. “It is going to … require immense work to reach volume production and be cash flow positive at a price that people can afford,” he said. “So I just want to temper expectations for Cybertruck. It’s a great product, but financially, it will take, I don’t know, a year to 18 months before it is a significant positive cash flow contributor. I wish there was some way for that to be different, but that’s my best guess.”

Those assurances helped to support the shares of Tesla in after-hours trading, as shares were up more than 1% following the report. Shares have nearly doubled in price so far this year after losing 65% of their value in 2022.

CNN
 — 

Beth Holloway has waited nearly two decades for an end to her family’s “never-ending nightmare” – and while that doesn’t mean getting her daughter back, it does include getting justice for the Alabama teen who disappeared in 2005 on a graduation trip to Aruba.

On Wednesday, Joran Van der Sloot, 36, pleaded guilty in federal court to extorting and defrauding the Holloway family. He was accused of trying to sell information about the location of Holloway’s remains to her family in exchange for $250,000.

“It’s over. Joran van der Sloot is no longer the suspect in my daughter’s murder,” Beth Holloway said to reporters following Wednesday’s hearing. “He is the killer.”

The 18-year-old’s body has never been found. In 2012, an Alabama judge signed an order declaring her legally dead.

In a proffer dated October 3, Van der Sloot provided authorities with the details of how he killed Natalee Holloway. A proffer allows a defendant to offer information about a crime, sometimes as part of a plea deal.

As part of Wednesday’s hearing, Beth Holloway read aloud an emotional victim impact statement which can be read in its entirety here.

“Joran, for eighteen years you have denied killing my daughter Natalee,” Beth Holloway wrote. “Your lies and manipulation, taunting us with fake news interviews and wild stories of what happened to her, have caused indescribable pain and harm to my family and me.”

“The grief I feel lives way down deep in my soul,” she continued.

Van der Sloot is serving a 28-year prison sentence in Peru for the 2010 murder of Stephany Flores. Peruvian officials allowed his temporary release to the US in June to face the extortion and wire fraud charges.

He was expected to return to Peru to finish his murder sentence in the Flores case before returning to the US to serve time for the federal charges. But Wednesday’s plea agreement specifies that his US federal sentence will be served concurrently with his sentence in Peru.

New York
CNN
 — 

When Jane Fraser became CEO of Citigroup nearly two years ago, in the middle of the pandemic, she established the kind of flexible hybrid work culture that’s mostly unheard of among elite Wall Street bankers.

Although Fraser sees no need to return to the old ways, Citi’s experiment has shown not all workers can hack it working remotely. The less productive ones, she said, are being called back into the office for coaching.

“We do measure productivity very carefully,” she said Tuesday during a panel hosted by Bloomberg News during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“Apprenticeship is really important,” she added, recalling her own “eccentric and wonderful” mentors from her time as a young banker.

“We do want people collaborating, and they do collaborate better together,” Fraser said. “But at the same time we don’t have to go back to the ’80s model that sort of epitomized Wall Street, either.”

Fraser’s comments do not signal any formal change to the bank’s hybrid work policy, a Citi spokesperson said.

Fraser became the first woman to run a major Wall Street bank when she took the Citi CEO role in March 2021. Roughly a year into the pandemic, signs of burnout were everywhere with deal volumes soaring.

As part of her mission to cast Citi as the bank “with a soul,” Fraser saw an opportunity to embrace rather than resist a hybrid work schedule that allowed staff flexibility. “The blurring of lines between home and work and the relentlessness of the pandemic workday have taken a toll on our well-being. It’s simply not sustainable,” she wrote in a memo to Citi’s more than 200,000 global staff.

Most roles at Citi would become hybrid, with three days in the office and up to two at home, she said in the memo. She also implemented “Zoom-free Fridays” and urged staff to avoid scheduling calls outside traditional work hours.

That decision was both a response to the human tragedy of the pandemic and a calculated strategic decision to give the bank an edge in the cutthroat war for talent on Wall Street. Ultimately, she said, that bet has paid off, helping the bank “attract, retain and get the most out of our talent.”

Now, Fraser says, going forward it’s important for Citi to strike a balance between in-person collaboration and giving workers the flexibility they need.

“I think we’re in for a world of pretty tight labor supply,” she said. “We’re not seeing people coming back who had left the workforce in anything like the numbers we expected … We’re going to have to keep listening to our people to get that balance right.”

CNN
 — 

The US government assesses that Israel “was not responsible” for the blast at a hospital in Gaza on Tuesday, according to the National Security Council, following President Joe Biden’s comments that a Palestinian militant group was behind the strike.

A spokesperson for the NSC, Adrienne Watson, said the assessment was based on available reporting, including “intelligence, missile activity, and open source video and images of the incident.”

“While we continue to collect information, our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open-source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday,” Watson said in a statement on Wednesday.

The NSC followed up with an additional statement Wednesday afternoon leaning further into its assessment. “Intelligence indicates that some Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip believed that the explosion was likely caused by an errant rocket or missile launch carried out by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). The militants were still investigating what had happened,” Watson said.

Israeli officials have released audio of what they say is Hamas militants discussing the blast and attributing it to a rocket launched by PIJ.

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.

Among the evidence that’s been gathered is a blast analysis that suggests it was a ground explosion rather than an airstrike that hit the hospital, one of the sources said. There was no singular crater suggesting there was a bomb, but there was extensive fire damage and scattered debris that is consistent with an explosion starting from the ground level, according to the source.

That analysis is one datapoint that’s led intelligence officials to lean toward assessing that the attack on the hospital was a rocket launch gone wrong.

Still, the blast analysis is just one of the things being examined by the intelligence community, which has surged intelligence collection assets to the region. US intelligence officials have not made a final assessment and are still gathering evidence, the officials said.

In addition to the blast analysis, the initial US assessment was based on overhead imagery collected from US satellites and intelligence intercepts provided by the Israelis, according to officials.

Current and former law enforcement officials say US the assessment of the cause of the blast is being hampered because of the lack of access to the site and analysis of the bodies recovered. FBI teams can typically use samples from the scene to, within hours, identify the rocket fuel and explosives used, one former FBI official said. Without examining the scene, US officials are left to analyze signals and other intelligence that can help make a strong circumstantial assessment of the cause but is not definitive.

Not long after landing in Israel on Wednesday, Biden weighed in on who was behind the strike on the hospital. “Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after his arrival in Israel on Wednesday.

Asked what made him confident the Israelis weren’t behind the hospital strike, Biden said: “The data I was shown by my Defense Department.”

In his remarks later on Wednesday, Biden reiterated that based on the information the US has seen, the blast appears to have been “the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza.”

“The Palestinian people are suffering greatly as well – we mourn the loss of innocent Palestinian lives,” he said. “Like the entire world, I was outraged and saddened by the enormous loss of life yesterday in the hospital in Gaza. Based on the information we’ve seen to date, it appears the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza. The United States unequivocally stands for the protection of civilian life during conflict, and I grieve, I truly grieve for the families were killed or wounded by this tragedy.”

Authorities in Gaza have said Israel was behind the deadly blast at the hospital, while the Israel Defense Forces said its intelligence showed a “failed rocket launch” by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group was responsible for the explosion.

An IDF spokesman said Wednesday that imagery following the blast showed “no cratering and no structural damage to nearby buildings.”

“There are no craters here. The walls stay intact. This shows is it not an aerial munition that hit the parking lot” of the hospital, IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said at a news conference Wednesday. “Analysis of our aerial footage confirms that there was no direct hit of the hospital itself. The only location damaged is outside the hospital in the parking lot where we can see signs of burning.”

The US intelligence community has been reviewing different kinds of intelligence to try to reach an assessment, including overhead imagery from satellites as well as the blast analysis, the officials said.

“I’m not sure the IC is ready to make an absolutely conclusive attribution but what we’re hearing is consistent with what the president said,” Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said following a classified briefing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning.

House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner of Ohio and Himes issued a joint statement Wednesday saying, based on information from the Biden administration, they believed the hospital attack “was not the result of Israeli military action.”

Senate Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner of Virginia and the panel’s top Republican, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, said in a joint statement that the information they reviewed left them “confident” the strike was “the result of a failed rocket launch by militant terrorists and not the result of an Israeli airstrike.”

Israel has also provided the US with intelligence it has gathered related to the explosion, according to an Israeli official and another source familiar with the matter. The Israeli official said that Israel had passed signal intelligence on the explosion to US intelligence. Signals intelligence includes intercepted communications and other forms of data collected through various means.

“I believe the US intelligence community likely has enough imagery, communications intercepts, and other data to determine where the projectile originated that stuck in the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital and what the original statements of people on the ground were as to what they believed happened,” said Mick Mulroy, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East and retired CIA officer.

“In addition, from the video released publicly, the explosion is consistent with a rocket that still had a lot of rocket fuel at the time of impact,” Mulroy added.

Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, a CNN national security and military analyst, said the US military has overhead platforms that see “a missile burn when it takes off or when something explodes and comes out of the sky.”

The imagery released by the Israeli military of the explosion site was also “compelling,” Hertling said.

“It is very compelling, but when you also look at that aftermath, where’s the crater? When you’re talking about a crater from an Israeli bomb, there’s going to be a hole there,” he said.

British officials in public and private on Wednesday have not yet gone as far as the US. One official said it’s “not conclusive, but the Israeli assertion is not unfounded.”

“We’re not quite there yet,” another official said. “Not because we dispute what they’ve seen. We’re still at ‘Let’s look at all the facts.’”

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Wednesday that British intelligence services were working “rapidly” to establish the facts behind the deadly blast.

“We should not rush to judgments before we have all the facts on this awful situation,” Sunak told lawmakers in the UK parliament.

Multiple officials said that the US intelligence community has surged intelligence collection assets to the region, primarily through overhead intelligence collection as well as some special operations support.

One military source described the move as “a major shift” and “lots of focus on this from across the IC,” though the source said it’s not clear how long this shift will last.

It’s not clear how helpful the additional resources will be when it comes to both hostage intelligence and Hamas planning in such a densely populated area, according to a US official – especially if most of the hostages are in the tunnels.

It might help a little bit with planning for potential ground clearance, and some of the signals intelligence collection capabilities could detect Hamas communications to help pinpoint hotspots of their activity. But the official noted that Hamas has been pretty smart about staying off communications – one of the reasons, sources say, the group was able to avoid Israeli detection during the planning of the October 7 attack in Israel.

Overhead surveillance would likely be much more helpful for keeping an eye on Hezbollah and Iran, according to two officials. The US would absolutely not want to be surprised by a Hezbollah attack, however unlikely, and could provide the Israelis with warnings and indications of any imminent operation.

London
CNN
 — 

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has been charged with a public order offense following her arrest for protesting outside this year’s Energy Intelligence Forum in London, the Metropolitan Police said in a statement Wednesday.

The 20-year-old was charged with a failure to comply with a “condition imposed under Section 14 of the Public Order Act,” the statement outlined.

Thunberg had been attending a demonstration organized by climate group Fossil Free London outside the Intercontinental Hotel in London’s Park Lane, protesting the annual summit that gathers chief executives from oil and gas companies.

The police said a total of 26 people were charged following the protest Tuesday.

“The protestors were asked to move from the road onto the pavement, which would enable them to continue with their demonstration without breaching the conditions,” the statement added.

CNN has reached out to representatives for Thunberg, who is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on November 15, alongside 10 others.