By Whitney Wild, Elizabeth Hartfield, CNN

(CNN) — Don Lemon will appear in a Minnesota courtroom Friday to be arraigned on federal charges following his arrest last month in connection with a protest at a church in St. Paul.

Federal prosecutors allege Lemon and another independent journalist, Georgia Fort, participated in a “takeover-style attack” of Cities Church and intimidated congregants, after the two livestreamed a group of anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters rushing into the church on January 18, interrupting the service.

Lemon is being charged with two federal crimes: conspiring to violate someone’s constitutional rights and violating the FACE Act, which prohibits the use of force or threats to intentionally interfere with someone expressing their First Amendment right to practice religion.

The journalist and former CNN anchor – who now hosts his show on YouTube – has vowed to fight the charges. He has hired Joseph H. Thompson, a former Minnesota federal prosecutor, to represent him, according to court records filed earlier this week.

Thompson was one of at least six federal prosecutors who recently resigned from the Minnesota US Attorney’s office amid tensions with the Trump administration over the investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Good.

Lemon was arrested in a hotel lobby in Beverly Hills on January 29 while he was in Los Angeles to cover the Grammy Awards. More than two dozen agents from Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI arrested him, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the operation.

He was held overnight in federal custody, and released on his own recognizance the following day.

“I have spent my entire career covering the news – I will not stop now,” Lemon said on the steps of the federal courthouse in Los Angeles following his release. “In fact, there is no more important time than right now, this very moment, for a free and independent media that shines a light on the truth and holds those in power accountable.”

Lemon has repeatedly said, even during his live YouTube stream of the church disruption, that he was present at the demonstration as a journalist, not an activist. In footage of the episode, Lemon was heard saying, “I’m just here photographing, I’m not part of the group … I’m a journalist.”

The Justice Department first attempted to charge eight people, including Lemon. A magistrate judge rejected the charges against five of those people – Lemon among them – saying there was insufficient evidence to charge.

The judge, however, encouraged prosecutors to take the case to a grand jury and seek an indictment. And Lemon on his YouTube show said the government would try again to charge him.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Brian Stelter, Kara Scannell, Hannah Rabinowitz, Nick Watt and Nicki Brown contributed to this report.

The post Don Lemon set to appe

By Haley Britzky, CNN

(CNN) — The Defense Department has been aggressively pursuing laser weapons and defense systems, a push that gained significant attention this week when the use of an anti-drone laser system led to the temporary shutdown of airspace over El Paso, Texas.

The interest in high-energy systems has only accelerated as military planners look to grapple with the rise of commercially available drones and as the defense industry has jumped to develop laser-based weapons systems for ground, sea and air forces.

CNN reported that Customs and Border Protection was using a new counter-drone laser technology in El Paso which caused the Federal Aviation Administration to shut down airspace over the west Texas city. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed off on loaning the laser technology to CBP from the Defense Department in recent weeks, one of the sources told CNN.

It’s just the latest in the Pentagon’s long-running efforts to harness lasers for the military. The Defense Department has been researching directed energy weapons since at least the 1960s, according to a Congressional Research Service report, though only in roughly the last decade has the department made significant progress. The first directed energy weapon was deployed in 2014, the reports says, aboard the USS Ponce, a now-decommissioned amphibious transport dock.

But the last several years, with the surge in the use of drones in the war in Ukraine along with persistent concerns about protecting US troops stationed in the Middle East, has driven a surge of interest in the technology.

In November, the head of research at the Pentagon whittled down the list of technology priorities for the agency, with directed energy making the cut as one of six areas the military would push resources towards.

Directed energy weapons, such as high-energy lasers, could be used to shoot down drones, complete short-range air defense missions, and defend against rockets, artillery and mortar attacks, CRS said.

In 2017, the Army demonstrated the Mobile Expeditionary High Energy Laser 2.0 at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The system was used to take down small drones and quad copters, which the lead of the Army’s SMDC High Energy Laser Division, called “highly successful.”

“We look forward to working with industry and continue to mature the technology because we believe this technology is critical to the Army and will be very beneficial once we are able to get the technology mature enough to transition it and field it one day,” Adam Aberle said in the release.

And just last fall, the Army put out a request for information to defense industry partners specifically on an Enduring-High Energy Laser (E-HEL) production request. The RFI says the weapon system will be used against drones classified in groups 1-3, meaning smaller drones that weigh under 1,320 pounds.

But it’s not just the Army. The Air Force deployed a High-Energy Laser Weapon System Read more

By Meg Tirrell, CNN

(CNN) — “Our public health system has squandered the trust of our citizens,” President Donald Trump said on February 13, 2025, the day his nominee to run the nation’s health agencies, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was sworn in. “They don’t trust us. They don’t trust anybody, frankly. They’ve gone through hell.”

Trump promised that Kennedy would “lead our campaign of historic reforms and restore faith in American health care.”

A year later, polling shows that RFK Jr.’s tenure atop the US Department of Health and Human Services has had the opposite effect. Trust in government health agencies has plummeted, according to health policy and research group KFF, with declines across the political spectrum. And experts told CNN that they fear things could get worse.

“Today, the federal government’s public health agencies and leaders represent the greatest threat to efforts to prevent measles, whooping cough and other vaccine-preventable diseases,” said Dr. Jason Schwartz, an associate professor at Yale School of Public Health. It’s “a scenario that would have been inconceivable a few years ago.”

HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said that trust in public health was damaged by the Biden administration’s “inconsistent guidance and a message to Americans to ‘trust the experts’ without showing the evidence.”

“Secretary Kennedy’s mandate is to restore transparency, scientific rigor, and accountability to restore the trust the Biden administration squandered,” Nixon continued. “Secretary Kennedy is leading the most transparent HHS in history, with unprecedented disclosure and openness aimed at restoring public trust in federal health agencies.”

Kennedy’s strategy has at times involved gutting organizations; after he fired all 17 experts on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel in June, he published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal headlined, “HHS Moves to Restore Public Trust in Vaccines.”

And he’s moved to dramatically reshape the makeup of HHS.

The day after Kennedy’s swearing-in, Valentine’s Day, thousands of employees were fired from their jobs at the CDC, the US Food and Drug Administration, the US National Institutes of Health and other health agencies, part of a Department of Government Efficiency purge. It would precede an even bigger reorganization of HHS just six weeks later that aimed to shrink its ranks by nearly a quarter – a total of about 20,000 employees.

Meanwhile, public health emergencies were already on his doorstep.

Two weeks after Kennedy was sworn in, health officials in Texas announced that a school-age child had died in the fast-growing measles outbreak centered in the western part of the state. Kennedy, asked about it in a Cabinet meeting later that day, called measles outbreaks “not unusual.” It was the first death in the US from measles in a decade.

The year that followed would bring two

By Mostafa Salem, Sana Noor Haq, CNN

(CNN) — The head of one of the world’s largest port operators has been replaced following revelations of ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, who had led the Dubai-based DP World for decades, is facing intense scrutiny after the release of Epstein-related documents that revealed correspondence between the two men, including lewd exchanges.

Without naming bin Sulayem, Dubai’s Government Media Office announced that DP World had appointed a new chairman and group CEO, positions previously held by bin Sulayem. DP World confirmed the new appointments to CNN.

The company declined to comment on bin Sulayem’s relationship with Epstein when contacted by CNN before his removal.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

The post Dubai’s DP World replaces chairman amid scrutiny over Epstein ties appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

Análisis por Rey Rodríguez, CNN en Español

De niños, no eran pocos los cubanos que, hace algunas décadas, acompañaban a sus padres en los paseos en coche hasta el malecón de La Habana. A orillas del mar, pasaban horas observando los barcos que entraban a la bahía. Aquel espectáculo trasmitía paz y, también, una sensación de esperanza, que ahora ya no logran encontrar.

Hoy, ya adultos, siguen yendo al malecón, aunque no en automóvil. El trayecto lo hacen a pie, pese a que deben recorrer varios kilómetros para llegar al emblemático muro que se extiende por la costa norte de la capital cubana. No hay transporte ni gasolina, las calles están vacías.

La escasez se ha vuelto parte del paisaje diario, aseguran en diálogo con CNN desde La Habana. Todos piden mantener el anonimato, temerosos de represalias por parte del gobierno de Miguel Díaz-Canel que, aún bajo presión extrema de Estados Unidos, mantiene a los cubanos bajo completo control.

La crisis en Cuba se ha agudizado luego de que la administración Trump anunciara recientemente nuevas medidas de presión contra la isla. En un período corto, la isla se quedó sin su principal proveedor de petróleo, Venezuela, tras la captura del derrocado presidente Nicolás Maduro, en un operativo de fuerzas especiales estadounidenses el pasado 3 de enero.

A los pesares por la ausencia del petróleo venezolano, el presidente Donald Trump sumó otro desafío. El 30 de enero, Trump firmó un decreto que autoriza a su administración para imponer aranceles a aquellos países que suministren petróleo a la isla, bajo el argumento de que Cuba representa una amenaza para su seguridad nacional.

Varios expertos en Cuba, entre ellos el abogado constitucionalista Rafael Peñalver, coinciden en que el verdadero interés de Washington es asfixiar económicamente a la isla para provocar la caída del gobierno de Díaz-Canel.

El gobierno estadounidense ha señalado que apuesta por una salida diplomática con La Habana, aunque considera que el gobierno del presidente cubano está en “sus últimos momentos” y que el país atraviesa “una etapa crítica”. Así lo afirmó la portavoz de la Casa Blanca, Karoline Leavitt, al referirse a la situación cubana durante una conferencia de prensa el 5 de febrero, cuando fue consultada sobre si, después de Venezuela, seguía Cuba.

La Habana ha condenado las medidas impulsadas por Trump. Sin embargo, tal como están las cosas, su margen de maniobra es estrecho, señala Peñalver a CNN. El experto se fue de Cuba a los 10 años y desde entonces radica en Miami. Como ejemplo, cita el anuncio de Díaz-Canel de que Cuba está dispuesta a dialogar con Washington, pero “sin presiones”.

La propuesta de La Habana incluye la discusión de varios temas de la agenda bilateral —como migración, lavado de dinero, terrorismo, combate al narcotráfico y medio ambiente—, pero sin aludir a reformas del sistema político.

Este jueves arribaron a Cuba dos buques de la Armada de México cargados con cientos de toneladas de alimentos y productos de higiene personal. Una ayuda valiosa para el momento que vive la isla, pero insuficiente frente a la magnitud de la crisis que atraviesa, dicen los cubanos. Es quizás la más grave desde la llamada “crisis de los misiles”, de octubre de 1962, el episodio más tenso de la Guerra Fría, según Peñalver.

El miércoles, durante su conferencia matutina, la presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum adelantó que la ayuda humanitaria a Cuba seguirá y aseguró q