♪ ♪ narrator: funding for presentation of this program is provided by.. the freeman foundation. by judy and peter blum-kovler foundation. pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. and by contributions to this pbs station from viewers like you, thank you. woman: and now, "bbc world news". laura: i am laura trevelyan in

washington, and this is "bbc world news america." extensive search-and-rescue operations are underway in turkey and syria after major earthquakes. more than 2300 people have been killed in southern turkey. thousands of buildings collapsed. around 120 more people died in northern syria. the quake measured 7.8 and was felt as far away as lebanonnd cyprus. >> we've all heard the sound of the earthquake. my sister is still trapped under the rubble. >> there are 12 families trapped here and no one managed to get out. they are all inside here. laura: house republicans want to formally condemn the biden administon so long to shoot down a spy balloon. china says the u.s. response is an overreaction. >> show your respect! >> ♪ laura: beyoncé bricks the record for the most -- breaks the record for the most grammy

award-wins of all time, picking up her 32nd trophy. ♪ welcome to "world news america" on pbs and around the globe. we begin tonight with the rescue operations underway across much of southern turkey and northern syria following a huge earthquake that has killed more than 3500 people. rescuers are racing to save those trapped beneath the rubble ter thousands of buildings collapsed in both countries. 45 nations are sending aid after turkey issued an international appeal for help. president erdogan of turkey said we don't know where the number of dead and injured can go. the earthquake struck early monday while people were still asleep. the epicenter was near the border of turkey and syria and measured a magnitude 7.8.

the second earthquake measured 7.5 and hit 130 km to the north of the first. millions of people aoss turkey, syria, lebanon, prus, and israel felt the earthquake. our first report comes from anna foster, near the side of the first earthquake near the turkish-syrian border. >> running for their lives, shaken to their foundations. whole buildings fell. across southern turkey, peace became panic. people helped where they could. this was a series of powerful earthquakes, not just one. they were only around 20 kilometers under the surface and shallow quakes caused the most damage. in towns and cities across a huge area, the rescue efforts began with diggers and sniffer dogs. teams of people began to dig frantically, in search of survivors.

for decades, turkey has been bracing itself for huge -- a huge quake. tonight, everyone is a rescuer and they all want to find a survivor. >> [speaking foreign language] >> it is a painful wait for news. >> there are people still trapped under rubble. i have a friend living in this apartment. his children were rescued from the top floor. only his daughter broken arm. we will see what happened to those who lived on the ground floors. may god give us a speedy recovery. >> i was sleeping when my wife suddenly woke me up. the quake was very scary. it took almost two minutes until the shaking stopped. >> outside turkey, the world stands ready to help. offers to send specialist equipment and teams of experts have been coming in all day. >> [speaking foreign language] >> we have received several offers of international aid for our country. offers of assistance from 45 countries, including nato and the european union, have reached

us. >> in this city, help arrived paly services, young men fit enough to move the rubble stepped in. you can really see the size of the effort that's going on here. rescuers are using their barehands, throwing down blocks, trying to search desperately for survivors. this used to be a 12 story apartment building. so far, they've only found three survivors. for families with missing relatives, the wait for news is agony. >> we all heard the sound of the earthquake. she has her sister down there under the rubble. >> it is eight people under their. three of them are children. my uncle and his wife and their son and their daughter and three children. >> there are my sister and her three children under the building. also, her husband, her mother and father-in-law are there,

too. >> it's still too early to know the real scale of the destruct here. finding those who are trapped beneath collapsed buildings will take days, if not weeks. in the first few hours, the death toll is already many hundreds. the number of injured stands in the thousands. turkey has dealt with natural disasters before. few are on this scale. >> [speaking foreign language] >> in the aftermath of the quake is testing these rescuers to their limits. anna foster, bbc news. laur across the border in northern syria, hundreds have been killed and thousands more are trapped and injured in what is one of the poorest regions. . of the world. syria. is isolated by the west after years conflict between president assad's forces and rebel fighters, making rescue efforts even harder. our chief international

correspondent lyse doucet now reports. lyse: a syrian village which vanished in minutes. it people are all that is left standing, those who survived. so many didn't. all along this area next to turkey. >> still now many families are under the rubble. our teams artrying to save them. it's a very difficult task for us. we need help. we need the international community do something. lyse: families shaken from their sleep just after 4:00 a.m. by a powerful earthquake whose epicenter is just across the border. in the dead of night, rescue workers known as white helmets raced to help, pulling this young girl from the rubble. this is work they know well. the last rebel held enclave has lived for years with ferocious

ba argument -- bombardment by warplanes of the syrian military or its russian ally. the few hospitals which still operate here have hardly any resources or staff. now, they are overwhelmed. >> we received hundreds of casualties early. we need urgent help for the area, especially medical help. lyse: these patients were already living on the edge in a war zone, displaced time and again for more tn a decade. now, they have been knocked down again. >> [speaking foreign language] >> [translating] we were sleeping peacefully. at 4:00 a.m., we felt a huge earthquake. i woke up my wife and my children and we ran towarthe exit door. we opened it, and suddenly all of the building collapsed.

lyse: they are also worn down by war. here, it is the syrian arab red cross and working with barehands and also with -- red crescent, working with their hands and diggers. >> we ask for mercy for the victims and speedy recovery for the injured. lyse: syria's plight has been thrust into the eyes of the world again. today, it is fighting a different kind of battle. >> the international community has an opportunity to try and put it right. put principles over politics. look at ways they can show solidarity with those on the ground. make sure that syrians who have been going through over a decade of crisis get the support they desperately need. lyse: long-suffering syrians have felt forgotten by the

world, reaching people across this broken country will be hard, but this disaster may make the world care again. lyse doucet, bbc news. laura: turkey is one of the world's most aive earthquake zones, with several fault lines. the worst earthquake on record in turkey was in 1999 and killed more than 17,000 people. here is our science editor. >> this is the most perfect -- powerful earthquake to hit the region in almost a century. what do we know about it? the epicenter was in the south of turkey, near the syrian border. it is one of the world's most seismically active regions, and turkey sits where three tectonic plates come together. the arabian plate pushes up into the eurasian plate, which squeezes the other plate to the west. is moving about 2 cm every year. when plates grind past each

other, fault lines are created. the north anatolian fault has seen some major earthquakes over the past century. the east anatolian fault, where the earthquake happened, has been much less active, so tension has built up along at until today, when it was released in this huge earthquake. what's made this particularly deadly is it struck at a shallow depth, just 11 miles beneath the surface. laura: that was rebecca reporting. the u.s. government is sending two urban search-and-rescue teams to turke we are joined by the u.s. ambassador to turkey. knowing the terrain as you do, just how difficult will it be on that border area for search-and-rescue teams? >> the difficulties are twofold. this is mountainous terrain, and this is winter, and the weather has been quiteevere in recent days. both of those complicate a relief effort. it's not the border that is the

complication, at least for the turkish recovery effort. but when you look at northwestern and northern syria, there, the political situation in the security environment in syria are certainly very significant complicating factors. laura: as you say, the fact that syria is driven by civil war -- riven by civil war, isolated by the west, how easy will it be for international aid organizations to get there? >> there is an extraordinary international cross-border effort being coordinated, and i mandate just renewed last month -- a mandate just renewed last month, which provides a basic medical and feeding for refugees and internally displaced persons in northwest syria. but under these present circumstances, something much more significant is going to be required. first and foremt is the

responsibility of the syrian government to care for its own people. reettably, over the course of the last decade plus, we have seen absolute disregard by the syrian government for anything which concerns the welfare of its own population. you have a double problem here. mobilizing and delivering, securely, international assistance, and then the approach of the syrian govement itself to its own people. laura: this is an area of the world that has seen multiple crises: war, refugees, economic troubles. are you just concerned about the earthquakes coming on top of everything else that's already going on? >> with respect to syria and the plight of the syrian displaced, in their own borders, very much displaced internally, yes. it is a further blow on top of the decade of success of low -- successive blows which have left that population in an extraordinarily precarious

situation. laura: when it comes trkey, president hartigan is facing all these -- president erdogan is facing all these economic -- >> turks have the ability to cope with their own national -- natural disasters when they come in the course of normal events. but as the turkish government has reached out for assistance for this situation, the responses from the international community, and i would note, from countries whose historic relations with turkey have not been positive, greece, israel, others, the responses in this case have been overwhelmingly positive. that's an encouraging sign. but the scale of this disaster is only beginning to unfold. as with all earthquakes anywhere, it's only in the days ahead that an accurate accounting of the damage done. first and foremost, of course, the casualties, the killed, the

injured. but also the infrastructure damage done in wintertime will require not just a turkish effort, but as the turkish government has requested, international assistance as well. laura: david satterfield, thanks so much for being with us tonight. >> thank you. laura: for the u.s. navy is trying to retrieve pieces of the chinese balloon shot down off the coast of south carolina on saturday. president biden was briefed about the balloon on tuesday and the white house is under pressure over why it was allowed to cross the country in the first place if china was believed to be using it for surveillance. here is republican congressman dusty johnson, who sits on the house select committee on competition with china. >> i do think the balloon should have been shot down before south carolina. i'm sure there are reasons why the white house didn't act, but the reasons they are giving publicly simply don't make a lot of sense. i'd like to get us into a classified environment, where

all members of congress and particularly those of us on the select committee on china can probe the answers of the white house a little bit more. i think there's more to the story that we haven't been told yet. laura: let's get more now from our north american correspondent, who joins us now. republicans are saying there is more to this story that hasn't been told. ha the white house messaging been a bit muddled? >> there's been so much confusion that has come out of this story. in the last hour, president biden spoke and said, i always wanted to shoot this balloon down, but he took the advice from the military. it's worth remembering this balloon isn't just any balloon. it's like the ngth of three buses. pentagon officials say it's about 200 feet tall. the transport sector -- secretary spoke about it and said shooting it down while it was flying over america would've been a danger to airspace, as well as on the ground. republicans have lashed out at president biden, saying, why did

it take so long. it was adrift for about a week. they are saying this would've never happened under donald trump. but it did. laura: aren't u.s. officials now briefing that three times under the trump administration a ball oon across the u.s., but apparently not for very long and trump officials didn't know? >> it turns out these are not a one-off. it has happened three times under trump's administration. donald trump has come on social media, that's not true -- has commented on social media, that's not true. john bolton was asked about it and he didn't categorically deny it, but he also said he didn't recall it happening during his tenure. he was fired by donald trump. as you say, republicans are saying, if there were balloons previously, they didn't last as long as this one did. as you mentioned, the navy is recovering the debris. once they do, perhaps the biden

administration can find out little bit more. laura: this is happening as the president prepares for his state of the union address. republicans are calling on him to be honest about the strategic threat with china. what can we expect from the president's speech? >> it's like the balloon is the uninvited guest to the state of the union address. of course, biden wants to remind americans of their legislative whens --ins. but the republicans have seized on this and say that it shows he is weak on china. i think it will feature heavily in the republican response to biden's speech. what we can expect from the president is he probably will talk about it and he might use the balloon as a way of sending that strong message to beijing that you can't do this in america whilst also trying to convince the american public and some of those republicans that he did act swiftly, and also, at the same time, say to beijing, you shouldn't have done this,

but we still want to work with you on things like climate change and the economy and what have you. biden is used to international crisis overshadowing his speech. last year, it came just six days after russia invaded ukraine. laura: thanks for joining us. let's go to england now, where tens of thousands of nurses and ambulance staff have been on strike, the first time both have taken industrial action on the same day. house leaders have warned today's action could be the most disruptive so far in this winter's pay dispute. our health editor reports. >> on the picket line, kelly explains why she was willing to go on strike. >> i wouldn't be here if i thought i'd left a patient at risk. >> a few hundred meters away, local ambulance staff were also picketing. >> we need more ambulances out on the road, but to staff them,

we need more staff and better conditions and a pay rise to keep staff here. >> for patients, strikes me and canclations of routine care and some disruption -- mean cancellations of routine care and some disruption. at local level, hospitals reached their own agreement with the royal college of nursing. in this emergency department, there are fewer nurses on shift than on a normal day, so other staff are drafted in. more consultants than usual are on shift, like phil here. he's helping to dispense medication, a job that might normally be done by nurses. and postponements in routine care on strike days can mean more pressure on a&e. >> we urge people to come forward if you need emergency, lifesaving care.

if we have other areas of the hospitals affected, it may be that more patients end up needing to come through the emergency department and receive urgent care. >> ministers say they will talk about next year's pay from april, but not the wage award already paid out. >> it will reflect the inflation and their circumstances, but it should be done through the independent pay review, which can look at what the anne heche needs -- nhs needs, but also the wider economy. >> nurses are ready to continue strikes if there are no talks on this year's pay. >> i would say, rishi sunak can call these strikes off at any time. he shouldn't push nurses onto picket lines to may. that's unforgivable if he does. let's get around the table and talk. >> health unions are in talks with the scottish and wealth governments over new pay offers

-- and welsh governments over new pay offers. laura: in other news around the world, israel's army says it has killed several palace dealing militants -- several palestinian militants. israeli officials say the operation was aimed at arresting members of hamas, who were in field -- involved in a failed attack last month. in hong kong, the biggest trial since beijing introduced sweeping restrictions on free speech in the territory has begun. defendants are accused of breaking hong kong's national security rule. the trial is taking place without a jury, which is unusual in hong kong. most of those charged have already spent two years behind bars. chile is under -- parts of chile are under a state of emergency due to wildfires.

more than a dozen people have died. beyoncé has become the most decorated artist in the history of the grammys, winning her 32nd award on sunday. other big winners included harry styles, adele, and lizzo. >> ♪ >> harry styles was one of the first to perform, but it wasn't the last time he took to the stage. >> harry styles! >> he won the first award of the evening for best pop album. >> breaking the record for the most grammy wins of all-time, stand up and show your respect, it is "renaissance," beyonce. >> it was beyoncé who made history. >> i would like to thank my parents, my father, my mother, for loving me and pushing me. i'd like to thank my beautiful husband. my beautiful three children, who

are at he watching. >> it up here, best friend. adele. >> ♪ >> adele triumphed in the best pop solo performance. >> i want to dedicate is to my son. he said, don't cry. here i am, crying. >> the grammy goes to lizzo for "about damn time." >> m and adele having a good time, just rooting for our friends, so this is an amazing night. >> harry styles! >> but it was harry styles who took the most coveted award of the night, winning album of the year. >> i listened to everyone in this category when i'm alone. i don't think any of us sit in the studio thinking, making decisions based on what's going to get us one of these. this is really kind.

i'm so grateful. >> the show was closed with a legendary performance, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of hip hop. bbc news, los angeles. laura: finally, beyoncé was the queen of the emmys, as you saw. tickets for her world tour went on sale today. fans had their battle plans at the ready to get those tickets, including trying to crowdfund them. the presale began today with tickets starting just over60. it is seen at the first major test for ticketmaster since the companies system was overwhelmed by demand for taylor swift tickets last year. i'm laura trevelyan. thank you so much for watching "bbc world news america." narrator: funding for presentation of this program is provided by.. the freeman foundation. by judy and peter blum-kovler foundation. pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs.

and by contributions to this pbs station from viewers like you, thank you. ♪ ♪ narrator: you're watching pbs. ♪♪ announcer: usa today calls it, "arguably the best bargain in streaming." that's because the free pbs video app lets you watch the best of pbs anytime, anywhere. simply download the pbs video app on your mobile or streaming device.

geoff: good evening. i'm geoff bennett. amna nawaz is away. on the newshour tonight. rescue workers desperately search for trapped survivors after thousands are killed by a major earthquake that shook turkey and syria. the u.s. works to recover debris from the chinese balloon it shot down. what china is trying to accomplish with repeated incursions into u.s. airspace. and. while women in afghanistan face intensifying oppression from the taliban, many still find ways to have their voices heard. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has beenprovided by --