INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Where at least 240 have been killed and nearly 200 are still missing after Monday's earthquake, which was one of the largest that hit the country in years. The 7.4 magnitude quake hit western Colombia with some of the worst damage in the cities of Cali and Pereira. Let's show you now some scenes from Pereira where you see rescue teams continuing to search for reviv uh survivors rather in the rubble of hundreds of collapsed buildings. They're using buckets, their hands, anything they can find to move some of that rubble. Around 5,000 homes have been damaged and dozens of multi-story buildings have been reduced to rubble. Colombia's president has declared a national emergency, and the US, Mexico, Ecuador, and France have offered assistance and aid. It comes less than two months after twin quakes devastated the north of Venezuela, killing more than 6,000 people.

SPEAKER_03 0:52

Daybreak in Cádiz, one of the hardest areas hit by yesterday's 7.4 magnitude quake. Residents and rescue teams are working together around the clock, searching collapsed buildings and flattened homes for survivors. Local residents Taul Paz spoke of the devastation that took place close to his home.

SPEAKER_08 1:13

This community was formed by several blocks of houses. This was blocky here. All houses were destroyed. This is a total loss. Thank God so many people managed to leave before the houses collapsed.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Children and teachers faced falling deviates as they made it down the stairway of this school. Luckily, no one was badly hurt. Emergency workers made this dramatic rescue of a woman who was trapped on the rubble of a semi-collapsed building, lifting her to safety.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Behind me, there is a totally collapsed building with rescue teams hoping to find survivors.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

Colombia's new president, who has only been in the job since Friday, has declared a state of emergency. However, he now faces up to leading the country through his worst earthquake in a decade.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Earlier I spoke to Juan Camilo Jiménez, response director for the World Central Kitchen, currently providing aid in Pereira, and I asked him what the situation is like there.

SPEAKER_06 2:25

Currently I'm here in Pereira City of the City Center. City Center is one of the epicenters of the impact of the earthquake here in Pereira. Where we're seeing is people still trying to do the last search and rescue. So buildings are wheels of collapse here to see last coming back on me. So we're seeing these things appear to see the same thing. People need food every day and water, and that's where we're providing our work in the kitchen. We're making sure that people that are on the move from their houses to shelters to family, or they are still waiting outside of their buildings for the beloved ones or to try to rescue some of the audience, have food and water. Also, people, of course, will need shelter and other things eventually.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

What are some of the challenges that you're facing on the ground right now?

SPEAKER_06 3:27

Challenges this is a blue location disaster. But we have at least five dexteries that have been affected in a radius of like eight hours by car. So that would another triangle uh pressure on those consists because we need to have the capacity to be everywhere because all the places have this necessity and they have the impact. So that's what we're doing. We're sending up things in all these places. Challenges of multiplications, we have a lot of shortage on electricity, water, but also internet is not always off to speed and they are connected to subtle cloud. But like we're seeing that is uh it's trying to reach people, and also these people that are still trying to find for the people that sometimes is just for activity, but like we're struggling with that.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

How are organizations like yours um working with local authorities that are also trying to aid uh people on the ground there?

SPEAKER_06 4:22

So we're working and when we do a show of present and I offer our health, like we're working with which children might need extra support and that capacity of food of water that we're expert with, so we're making sure that we're in the hard publication and we're providing water and full for the units, or we're creating everything from subsidies, and we're present we're doing problems of social sites, working along with the community, with the local chefs and local community members that understand their needs, and they have been working for the community for years, so we're coordinating with all of the actors.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

We're seeing such extensive damage in cities like Pereira. Do you get any sense of how long people will need the type of aid that you're providing right now?

SPEAKER_06 5:00

It's hard to tell. Um we don't come here, we like it's like a day. We don't like to see other things faster than why it's a long period. I can tell you that it's going to take a few weeks to recover. The way to recover and rebuilding and construction is going to take quite a few years based on what we have seen in replaces, and kind of these like again, these four things that have been affected, and think about that because you need to have building, you need to demolish them, control that reproducate people. So that will take time for sure.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

And can I ask you personally, it must be difficult as you're trying to deliver a to see people searching, hoping that their loved ones will still be saved from under the rubble.

SPEAKER_06 5:44

Yes, it's hard. Uh, and uh for like we want to make sure that like we're there, but like it's hard. Like the scenes are desperation, people losing hope, but also we can see some happy scenes where people fly in accordingly with their people. Also, like certain like rescue labors having no kind of dense. They're pretty happy in a moment where people probably were like moving the move and not in places. So where we see is not that many people trapped, but it's still some people, and it's a laboratory point, and happy losing.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Now, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the number of Ebola deaths have surpassed 2,000, and what officials say is the fastest spreading outbreak in the country's history. Scientists are racing to develop a vaccine, but response efforts to contain the spread have been complicated by ongoing conflict on the ground and a worsening humanitarian crisis. In recent weeks, health workers have gone on strike to protest not being paid since the outbreak was declared nearly three months ago. A late detection is also being blamed. The World Health Organization says the outbreak started in February, months before it was officially declared in May. Let's speak now to Dr. Amish Adalja, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Thank you for joining us. This is a troubling milestone. 2,000 deaths in the DRC. Why are we continuing to see this spread?

SPEAKER_05 7:04

We're continuing to see this spread because the public health authorities there do not have control of this outbreak. If you look at the new cases that are occurring, most of them are coming from outside of the contact tracing environment, meaning these are undetected, unknown cases from unknown chains of transmission. So there is basically a shadow epidemic going on that's continuing to spread unchecked. And until that contact trace number gets higher, where they're able to understand who's infected, who's been exposed, we're going to continue to see spread of this virus.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Does that involve then, Dr. Odell, just kind of shutting off the area entirely and not allowing any free movement of people? What would that look like?

SPEAKER_05 7:44

No, that doesn't involve any of that because that could that could end up having a paradoxical effect and driving more transmission underground. But it does mean being much more aggressive with trying to find cases. And from what I've read, they are starting to go door to door looking for cases rather than kind of relying on contact tracing because the contact tracing just isn't working there. So what it will mean is more people doing a lot of the basic bread and butter public health work. But the point, overarching point, is that the community in the DRC, in these outbreak zones, has to own this outbreak. They have to become part of this response because otherwise it can't just be people from the external tr from the external world trying to stop this. The community has to be part of this response and buy into this and really see the value in stopping the spread.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

This must be incredibly challenging for those health officials and health workers on the ground. We mentioned that some of them had gone on strike because they hadn't been paid.

SPEAKER_05 8:40

Exactly. There's a lot of disruption that occurs in these uh provinces in the DRC where the whole outbreak is centered. And if the healthcare workers who are expected to take care of the patients, to do the contact tracing, to do safe burial practices, to talk to the community, if they're not getting paid, if they're not being rewarded for the work that they're doing, they're not going to do it. And it's just going to take longer and longer to extinguish this outbreak.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

What about the efforts to create a vaccine that can effectively combat this outbreak? How far along is that?

SPEAKER_05 9:11

So that's sort of a bright spot right now in this outbreak that there are multiple clinical trials going on. Clinical trials using the prior MERC vaccine, which is targeted against a different species of Ebola, which at least has anecdotal evidence that it might work. That's being tried. There are phase one clinical trials for specific vaccines against this particular species of Ebola, the Bundabuggio species. But I think we will start to see some data at least on the repurposing of the Merck-Zyre strain vaccine soon. But it is moving very quickly, all of the clinical trials.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Of course, we are still seeing this spread despite that bright spot that could provide some relief down the road. How high is the risk, do you think, right now, of contagion beyond the DRC?

SPEAKER_05 9:52

It's clear that countries that border the outbreak zone, places like South Sudan, places like Uganda, they really have to be on alert for any imported cases that could occur. Outside of that immediate region, I think the risk is fairly low, but the immediate cross-border transmission risk is real.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Okay, Dr. Amy Shadalja, thank you so much for your analysis today.

SPEAKER_05 10:14

Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Now, a former U.S. Marine who is being held in Russia and reported to be in extremely poor health has been released after more than four years. The U.S. State Department says Robert Gilman has been freed on humanitarian grounds and no prisoner exchange had taken place. Mr. Gilman was jailed in 2022 for assaulting a prison officer, and his sentence was later extended for violence against prison staff.

SPEAKER_09 11:37

They were workers of one of Ukraine's largest steel factories, which is based there. More than 20 people were injured. President Zelensky said there were at least some North Korean ballistic missiles that were part of that attack. That's something he'd already warned his people was a growing threat, not just to this country. He said that Russia and North Korea were working more closely together, that more missiles were being supplied by Pyongyang for Moscow to fire at Ukraine. But he also said this posed a growing risk to North Korea's neighbours, to countries like Japan, to South Korea, even to the Philippines. He warned people here over the weekend that as many as 50,000 North Korean soldiers were being drafted in to protect Russian territory as well. Now those weren't the only strikes last night. Kyiv was hit with two rounds of air raids. One set fire to a factory, a man was injured there. A children's hospital was also hit, but the patients and staff were safely sheltering, so there were no injuries there. In Dnipro Petrovsk, three people uh were killed. And there'd been growing unease, growing nervousness about the possibility of increased Russian attacks after Ukraine's success in conducting long-range drone strikes on Russian oil refineries. That has continued. And the lack of missile interceptors here is an ongoing cause of concern. For the first time today, Ukrainian officials gave no figures for the number of missiles fired by Russia or that the air defenses here had been able to shoot down. The sort of detail that they usually give. But that followed a statement yesterday from the Air Force asking the media not to focus on sensational headlines or pessimistic details about how many missiles got through because of the shortage of interceptors.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

That was Dan Johnson there in Kyiv. Now, authorities in China are warning of a rise in marriage fraud as scammers target single men desperate to find a wife.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

She seemed demure, devoted.

SPEAKER_04 14:46

I cannot work, I cannot sleep.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

The flash marriage agency he'd used also disappeared with his money.

SPEAKER_07 15:05

Of course, game marriages affect us. We have an old saying one spec of dirt ruins a whole part of soup. We often attend meetings by the local police. If any company commits fraud, it will shoulder legal responsibilities.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

That's the equivalent of the entire male population of the UK remaining a bachelor. But this scam has left Wang Zhuang with few options.

SPEAKER_04 15:59

I wasn't a good catch, and I spent all my money. I won't consider getting married again.