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Hello and welcome to news out from the BBC World Service coming to you live from London. I'm James Kimarassami.
你好,欢迎收听BBC国际广播电台的新闻报道,直播自伦敦。我是詹姆斯·基马拉萨米。
We begin today in Beijing where the Chinese president Xi Jinping is hosting his French counterpart in manual Macron for a state visit. Other states were on their mind and in their statements when they spoke in the great hall of the people, specifically Russia and Ukraine.
Mr Macron suggested that his host could play an important role. He'll help him to end the bloodshed in Ukraine and restoring global peace and stability. Russian aggression in Ukraine has dealt a blow to this international stability. It has put an end to decades of peace in Europe. I know I can count on you to bring Russia to its senses and everyone back to the negotiating table.
President Xi recently enjoyed a warm reception at the Kremlin but he's not spoken directly to President Zelensky despite being invited to do so by the Ukrainian leader. He did though insist that China shares France's vision for a political solution to the conflict.
On the Ukrainian crisis, China favors peace through political negotiations. Together with France, we launch an appeal to the international community to maintain reason and restraint and to abstain from any actions likely to lead to any deterioration or even an unraveling of the crisis.
The two leaders also talked bilateral business announcing a series of deals, notably in nuclear and wind energy before having a three-way meeting with the other visiting senior European official, the European Commission's president Ursula von der Leyen.
She's been delivering tougher measures on trade to China in recent weeks. We'll hear what China expects from its relationship with France later on in the program.
First, we'll get this assessment of what the French are hoping from this trip. Jamil Andalini is Europe editor for the news website Politico. He traveled to China with President Macron and he spoke to us just after the two leaders' news conference.
"Well, I think that President Macron is trying to maintain open channels of communication with China at a time of really heightened stress and strain on China's relationship with the West at a time when Russia's illegal occupation of Ukraine continues and China has been trying to play a real beautiful, fencing game as one of my Chinese friends here put it by trying to on the one hand make sure that Russia doesn't lose but on the other hand make it look like China is a neutral party maybe hoping to foster peace. Macron is clearly trying to get harder statements from President Xi on Ukraine and that feels like one of his main objectives. How successful has he been so far? I would say not quite middling successful. Xi Jinping made some pretty bland statements just before. I was just in the great hall of the people as they gave a press conference with communist Chinese characteristics which is a press conference with no questions from the press and they gave dueling statements or sort of you know reciprocal statements and Xi Jinping made a nod towards peace and wanting to solve the problem through negotiations and diplomatic efforts. I guess one small concession he mentioned the transfer of children and non-combatants saying that they wanted to not see that sort of thing and that was something that Macron was definitely interested in securing something around that topic."
"I think Xi Jinping did mention it. Macron mentioned it much greater length than specifically talked about the transfer of nuclear weapons to Belarus but Xi Jinping effectively I would say restated longstanding Chinese positions which you know we don't want to see nuclear amigurant which I think is a reasonable position but it's been China's longstanding position so I didn't see a lot of movement on that at least in the public statements that have happened so far. But Macron is going to spend more time with Xi Jinping this evening and then we're all flying to Guangzhou and southern China and he will spend a little bit more time with Xi Jinping there as well. The French delegation is saying that he'll spend all up maybe five or six hours with Xi Jinping on this trip."
"There's a business aspect to this as well that does President Macron see this visit as a business opportunity for France."
这方面还有一个商业层面,马克龙总统是否认为这次访问对法国是一次商业机会。
Yes absolutely. So he brought 50 odd business people with him on this trip to China and I've spoken to some of those CEOs of those major French companies and it's clear they very much would like a steady and stable relationship between China and France which would allow them to sell more to China and it's clear that from Macron's perspective the idea of decoupling is sort of something that's touted by many politicians in the US and some of the business communities in the US." that's definitely not what Macron is talking about so there's clear difference between the French position on economic and trade ties with China and the US position.
So does President Macron think that keeping strong trade ties is a way of keeping China on board and having some sort of leverage with it in terms of its policy towards Russia and more broadly its foreign policy? I would say that's my reading of it. I haven't had President Macron told me that directly but I am under the strong impression that many in Europe including President Macron many believe that cutting off trade and economic ties with China reduces the leverage of Europe in the West and pushes China more firmly into the arms of President Putin in Russia.
Perhaps on a lighter note what's it like traveling inside the French presidential bubble? I have to say for me personally it's very surreal I lived 22 years in China and 11 of them in Beijing and I say I was always very annoyed when foreign dignitaries would visit because all the roads get closed and you sit in traffic for many hours and to be part of the delegation and have the roads closed for me and be sitting in a delegation whisked around Beijing is a different perspective put it that way.
The European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen there as well I mean she's given rather more robust speech in the run up to this. Is this being seen as can a good cop bad cop the pair of them? I would say that gives too much credit to the coordination that may or may not have gone on beforehand. I would say that Ursula von der Leyen has a different role obviously in Europe as the president of the European Commission. She has a I would say luxury of not having to pander so much to a business community there has a lot of invested in China and she I would say also has you know a different constituency so she's able to say things that are much harder for a head of state of any European head of state given all the business ties and investment ties that exist between countries.
And that was Jamil Andalini of Politico speaking from Beijing.
这是 Politico 的 Jamil Andalini 在北京发表的讲话。
Well while President Macron has been on the international stages domestic problems are still making their presence felt in the wings. Today is the 11th day of nationwide industrial action in France that's the protest at the government's plan to increase the French pension age from 62 to 64. Sounds of the protests in Montagy's today while Axel Person is a trained driver he's a member of one of the biggest labor unions in France as Sege Tee and he's confident that the protests will eventually force the government to give in.
What we aim to achieve through these continued protests strikes industrial action and so forth is to make the country as ungovernable as possible in order to force the employers to call the government and tell them just to scrap this law because it's just it's worth it. The government is bent on basically stealing two years of our pensions and we're determined to fight them.
That fight has taken a more literal turn during some of the recent protests with radical groups stirring up violence and French police taking a more aggressive and in some cases unorthodox approaches led to a handful of serious injuries and that has brought international criticism with the EU human rights watchdog among the bodies questioning whether the response by the police has been proportional.
Well the French political scientist Sebastien O'Rosset has conducted research into police oversight in France and several other countries so what are the main criticisms of the French police during these recent protests. The police in France is under heavy criticism for the use of force, not a fatal force but the use of rubber bullets and of flashbang grenades because these weapons they are the source of a number of casualties. The second point is the lack of a sufficient consideration of the right to protest. The Minister of Interior himself has declared spontaneous protest on the streets to be illegal which is not the case by European law and by French law.
On the question of individual officers, can they get prosecuted for this kind of action? How difficult is it to find a gangster police officer? And the job of a police officer itself is difficult in such circumstances because it's a disorganized set of multiple protests, but when they do something wrong, it's very unlikely that they are going to be prosecuted.
The French police officer on the street is very difficult to identify. They are wearing helmets, public order suits, and they are not wearing systematically their individual identification number. So there are a couple of things that there is the way the policing is taking place. But as you say, also, the question of the legitimacy, the legality of the protests that they are policing, and you say that the Interior Minister has essentially moved the gold posts on that. And I guess that brings us to the fact that all roads lead to the political leadership in this, don't they?
Absolutely. In the French police system, the only and absolute boss is the Minister of Interior. The Minister of Interior not only sets the directions and the goals, but it directly intervenes in the tactics, and he would sit in the crisis room and give directly instructions to the governors, which are the representatives of the states in the French provinces. Of course, he says this is not about police brutality, this is a few individual cases of officers using disproportionate force. Absolutely. The Minister says we are not being violent, and everything is legal.
The other point he makes is that a thousand police officers have been injured in protests which have increasingly been hijacked by more radical, more violent groups. This is correct. There is a tiny minority of protesters who have decidedly oriented themselves to the use of a certain dose of violence, and they have hurt a number of police. But nonetheless, there are no deaths among police ranks. The only people who are dead in the last five years, they are on the protester's side, and we have two protesters in Saint-Soulin who are now in a coma.
You talked about the last five years, and that incorporates of course the yellow vest movement, which lasted for many weeks and again brought plenty of accusations about police tactics. After that, lessons were said to be learned, there were new regulations put in place, what was meant to have changed and what has changed?
The yellow vest was a major crisis for six months, and during that period there were more than 30 people who lost an eye, a hand, or a foot, and this is absolutely unprecedented in France.
黄背心是我们过去六个月的一大危机,期间有超过30个人失去了眼睛、手或脚,这在法国绝对是前所未有的。
After the yellow vest, the Minister of Interior decided that there should be a collective reflection about the tools and the tactics in order maintenance in France, and they have done what they called a national scheme for public order.
It's a document that has been produced and it puts together European principles about the freedom of protest with practices that are observed in France, such as the use of rubber bullets. But these principles are not being implemented today in France.
They've been codified but almost systematically every single principle is being violated. And that was the French political scientist Sebastien Rochef from Cien's Paul Grenoble University.
You're listening to News Hour from the BBC World Service. Coming up later on the pilot who had to deal with a real life snake on a plane.
你正在收听来自BBC国际广播电台的新闻时间。稍后我们会报道一位飞行员在飞机上遇到真正的蛇的故事。
I moved the seat forward and I could sort and nicely curl up a neat little bundle underneath my seat. I was definitely an unwelcome passenger. So how did Rudolf Erasmus deal with the deadly coba find out in just over 10 minutes time.
The headlines of this hour at talks in Beijing President Macron of France has urged his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to use his influence to help stop Russia's war in Ukraine.
Saudi Arabia and Iran have held their first high level meeting in more than seven years broken by China and a mayor in Australia is considering legal action against the company behind the artificial intelligence chatbot chat GBT. Cusing it of defamation we'll be speaking to the mayor's lawyer on News Hour tomorrow. You're listening to the BBC World Service.
This is News Hour coming to live from London with James Kamar Asami. President Biden will visit Northern Ireland next week as part of the event to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, the political deal which largely ended three decades of conflict known as the Troubles. One key component was a decision to bring Sinn Fein, the party linked to the Irish Republican paramilitaries of the IRA into a power-sharing regional government.
The BBC's Ireland correspondent Chris Page was in his last year at high school at the time. He's been back to the classroom to hear some personal reflections on the agreement and its impact.
Well, I'm back in our history and politics classroom with our teacher David Armstrong and a few old friends. Victoria, you school magazine report there. You wrote it. Mr Armstrong's kindly lifted out for us. Do you want to read a bit from it?
The year of 1997-98 was a year of expectancy and tension in Northern Ireland politics, with parties working round the clock to try and reach an agreement by the May deadline. The current affairs team consisted of chairpersons Simon McAvoy, committee members Gail McConnell and secretary Victoria Danoun. What do you remember most about that time?
There was still this amazing optimism of everyone here that yes this can happen and we're not going to give up who. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulder and today is about the promise of a bright future. A line can be drawn under the bloody past.
Mr Armstrong, what were your thoughts sitting at the front of this classroom and others and looking at its us? In terms of teaching it, I sort of felt there's something happening here. It's not just history, this is now. At that stage, it was actually whether we were going to buy in for hope that change would come or we would just want to see more of the same.
Gail, what do you think back and remember? It felt like such an exciting time because what we were studying in the classroom wasn't in the textbooks and we were all about to turn 18. We were also being schooled by you that you know voting is just like the bare minimum of what political involvement activism looks like. It really felt like an experience of kind of coming of age.
Simon, you've lived in England for I think nearly a whole 25 years. What really comes to me is how alive politics felt at that period. You know, I'd always been interested in politics but really it always felt like kind of a distant thing that other people do and suddenly we were kind of in the middle of this really momentous political moment. It felt like we were kind of sorting it out for ourselves.
Gail, you have written a couple of volumes of poetry, one of which focuses on very personal experiences in your life that you did speak a bite. My own kind of personal history was that my father was a prison governor in the May as prison and he was shot and killed by the IRA outside our home in 1984 when I was three and a half. I really wanted to try to understand the very long history that had kind of created the context for my father's murder and for everything that followed.
I remember you when Shed Fane came, you were sitting right up the front and listening to them very intently. People still tend to sit at the front of those meetings, which is why you, in a way, stood out, but I also was aware of your story in that sense.
I'll read something from this that kind of speaks to the moment of my father's murder, I suppose, but also that tries to reckon with an aftermath that's endless really. My father rejoices, that's what it means, my name, I mean, but did he? What if anything was the source of his joy? Was there joy between us before he left, where after he walked through the hall, the squeaky door, saddle across the tiles, walking outside into the morning, into those bullets sailing through the blue air, into perforation, into a heap into gravel on almost human shape into death into silence or whatever comes after.
What are your thoughts on the Good Friday Agreements sort of being and I? I would have voted in favour of it. One of my father's murderers did get out of prison under the Good Friday Agreement. One of the things I'm conscious the Good Friday Agreement didn't do was give us away collectively to reckon with the past.
17 million chickens have been slaughtered in Japan as part of the country's efforts to deal with the current outbreak of bird flu. That is more than double the number of carcasses produced during the last cult of its kind, and because of the nature of the disease, the dead chickens have to be disposed of with care.
It seems finding places to do that is causing a bit of a headache for the authorities. Let's find out more.
似乎找到能够做到这一点的地方让当局感到有点头痛。让我们了解更多情况。
We're joined now by James Sims, a Tokyo-based journalist.
现在我们欢迎东京驻扎的新闻记者詹姆斯·辛斯加入我们。
Hi James, how widespread that spread it then is this bird flu outbreak?
嗨詹姆斯,这次禽流感爆发有多广泛传播了?
Well, it's actually across Japan, and according to one survey done by the national broadcaster NHK of 26 prefectures, about 16 of them have had problems with finding places to bury the carcasses, and so that's about one third of their prefectures in Japan.
Well, I mean there are various issues that they face. One is actually securing the land, and once you secure the land, you have to get approval from the local residents that you're going to do this, and then also you need to conduct surveys to make sure there's no water, you know if it could affect whales or water supplies, and so you have to check that ahead of time.
But in some cases, they've secured the land, but they haven't actually done the surveys ahead of time to make sure that they can bring in heavy equipment and that there isn't water, and so now there have been some moves, including in the next, the current fiscal year budget, to have money supplied by the central government to ensure that there's proper surveys done on land before they might have to use it.
And they have to bury the carcasses, do they? Can they burn them?
他们必须把尸体埋掉,是吗?他们能够焚烧吗?
They can burn them, but there are a couple of problems with burning. One is it takes a lot more time. For example, in one case, I think a couple of three years ago, it took them almost two months to incinerate the carcasses. So, you can't really have the carcasses sitting around too long. You've got to do something with them, and the most efficient and quickest way to resolve or to get rid of the carcasses is to actually bury them.
Now, I guess prefectures that haven't been affected don't really want to take on a load of potentially infected birds. Do they mean is that one possible solution though to ship them to places that do have room?
I think, in principle, they want the carcasses to be buried at the poultry factory because you don't want to be transporting infected birds across, you know, even outside of that town or that area of like a town or village because you don't want to have that risk of spreading it. And so there have been various ideas that have been proposed. I mean one, you know I mentioned just in terms of doing the surveys ahead of time so you have the space available and make sure that there's no water in it, but they're also talking about trying to split up the poultry in the sort of the henhouses right so you don't have them all in one space if you can actually separate them, then if there's an outbreak you don't have to cull every bird in the house.
And briefly, one other impact of this millions of disappearing birds means, well, far fewer eggs.
简而言之,数以百万计的鸟类消失所带来的另一个影响就是,蛋的数量大大减少了。
Yes, prices have risen. I think about 30, 40, maybe even sometimes 50 percent. And also, there was a survey done by one of the Japanese research companies, and they have 100 restaurant chains, and it said that a quarter of them have actually cut back on products that use eggs, like pancakes, and also what they call the, there's like a custard that they use, it's like a savory custard that uses eggs. And so, they've actually stopped serving those because the prices have risen so much.
Many, many impacts of this bird flu outbreak in Japan.
这次禽流感爆发在日本带来了很多影响。
James Sims in Tokyo, thank you very much.
在东京的James Sims,非常感谢。
Tokyo thanks very much for that you're listening to news out from the BBC World Service with me James Kimarasami.
非常感谢您收听来自BBC世界服务的新闻,我是詹姆斯·基马拉萨米。东京
Coming up next we'll get China's view on that state visit of Emmanuel Macron, first though in a case of life imitating popular cinema, a South African pilot has had to deal with a real-life snake on a plane.
Rudolph Erasmus has been called a hero for landing the aircraft safely after a deadly cobra slithered into his cockpit. Ground staff had spotted the snake the night before but thought it had disembarked. But as Rudolph took to the skies, the reptile made a surprise appearance, as he explains to news as Regina Vadynathan.
"I felt this little cold sensation where your hips are treated. I initially thought it might have been my water bottle leaking. I usually keep the water bottle on my outside of my thigh, my leg and my hip and the side of the cockpit. So, I presume I didn't close it properly. That was the first thing that came to my head. But as I then sort of turned to the left and looked down, I saw the snake pulling its head back down underneath the seat. So, this snake was actually on your bare skin, correct?" "Correct, correct. You didn't scream. So, I was actually in the moment of stun silence. It's as if my brain did not register what was going on. So, there was a moment of silence from my side, but I eventually let the passengers know who I was flying that day that listen, we've got a bit of a situation on board that snake that we couldn't find earlier this morning, some of fun and sway under my seat. The only thing I went through my mind is, listen, we need to get down onto the ground as safely and as quickly as possible before this becomes a very interesting matter because I was, at some point, also scared that the snake might start slithering through the whole cabin area, and I was did I want to cause mass panic in the back, so I'm actually I'm glad I'd seek to breathe with you on my seat and stay there for the flight. And what about your colleague who's sitting next to you?" "There was definitely a moment of silence in the aircraft, to be truly honest, I think it could be a people breathe, but everybody was very, very calm. Nobody got excited. So, you learned safely, and everybody's calm."
The snake is still attached to your hip at this point or is it moved, "no, no, no, no, from the moment that I saw it, it went down underneath my seat, and it stayed there for that last 10-15 minutes until we touched down, "and once you landed, everybody vacated the aircraft. What happened to the snake?" "As I got out last, I moved the seat forward, and I could sort nicely curled up in that neat little bundle underneath my seat. We then contacted local snake catches. They didn't welcome, but unfortunately, by the time they got there, it completely disappeared. Could it still be somewhere in the aircraft?" "Next time, there is a slight possibility it might still be in there. We're all just hoping by the time I flew back this morning that it would have gotten out overnight at some point."
"Rudolph, you've been hailed a hero. How do you feel with that term?" "I wouldn't go that far as calling it a hero. Most of the help also came from my passengers remaining calm, keeping the whole cockpit and the cabin leader at that point sterile."
"How do you feel now that I mean you're talking to us on the BBC around the world? I mean, how do you feel with all this media interest that's come from this snake on a plane incident?" "I must say I didn't anticipate it being or becoming this big of a story, to be truly honest. It took off like a felt fire, indeed it did."
Rudolph Erasmus speaking to my colleague Regina Vadynath in there; you're listening to the BBC World Service, this is news hour coming to you life from London with James Kimarassami.
We're going to return now to our main story; the French President Emmanuel Macron's state visit to China. His call on Xi Jinping to use his influence with the Kremlin too, as Mr. Macron put it, "bring Russia to its senses on Ukraine." Well, at their joint news conference, the French leader spoke roughly twice as long as President Xi, and the political website said that this was noted by the Chinese leaders on to Raj as a protocol faux pas.
Never putting a foot wrong is our Asia Pacific editor Michael Bristol who's with me here in the news out studio. Well, first of all, this visit more broadly Michael why is Xi Jinping giving President Macron so much FaceTime? Several hours.
Well, these major powers in the world these two big leaders, they've come together. China's one for protocol as well, as you've just mentioned there. So, giving visiting leaders plenty of faces is an important part of their diplomacy.
There are specific reasons, though, why President Xi Jinping might want to court President Macron specifically, the economy. That's what really China wants to focus on. It's just come out of three years of really strict Covid restrictions, mass testing, sudden lockdown, that's really taken a toll on the economy in China.
And, over the last few weeks and months, you. see leader after leader in China really talking about we focus in attention on the economy and what aspects of that is trying to encourage foreign companies to train invest as much as possible in China.
Because of course the Chinese Communist Party derives much of its power in China from its ability to increase living standards year after year that's taken a hit over recent years so it wants more investment and interesting in one of the deals signed on the sidelines of this visit by President Macron to China was a deal by Airbus to increase production of its factory its assembly plant in Tianjin city of Tianjin and has getting a lot of press already in China so it really just shows you the sort of idea behind so much face time for President Macron.
So that's sort of practical thing that China wants to get out of this talks but what about in diplomatic terms it's not doing deals with the United States at the moment is it is this about driving a wedge between Europe and the US?
It certainly is a little bit about that interest in the Xi Jinping made reference to that kind of diplomatic push. It kind of commended France for being one poll in a multipolar world really suggesting actually pushing China push Europe France and Europe towards an idea China wants to see Europe in a position China wants to see Europe at this to give us an indication because of course we have had over recent years trade war between China and the United States.
Talk in the United States of decoupling the economy there from the Chinese economy, interesting the Ursula Wonderland was also in Beijing she talked about something called not decoupling but de-riskin taking the risk out of business deals. Certainly I think President Xi Jinping wants to sort of secure Europe as an independent area and entity separate to the United States.
The state with the United States briefly then I mean another development today of course China launching military drills in response to that much anticipated meeting between Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. What's China going to do after this? What's its next step?
I mean China's angry because it believes Taiwan is a part of its own territory so it tries to discourage any meeting between Taiwanese politicians and elected officials from other countries that's why it was so angry about this particular meeting but in some respects I feel it's going to de-escalate quite quickly because it would have been a bigger problem hard Kevin McCarthy gone to Taiwan because Tsai Ing-wen met him in America on her way back from Sunorn else I think China will see that.
Different and different and Nancy Pelosi are very briefly then what about Ukraine what about this call from President Macron for President Xi to play a key role in ending the war? He could play a key role I don't think he will. President Xi Jinping has already indicated he's already shown he's aligned himself with President Putin of Russia because he sees that alliance as a bullwalk against the United States and for China that's more important than the war in Ukraine.
Michael many thanks Michael Bristo our Asia Pacific editor well on the day that the Chinese leadership is focusing on its relationship with Europe Beijing's recent diplomatic breakthrough in the Middle East has produced a highly symbolic meeting in the Chinese capital for the first time in seven years the foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia have shaken hands the two regional rivals have also announced plans to take concrete steps such as restoring direct flights designed to end an era of confrontation.
Dr. Sanam Vakil is director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the International Affairs think tank Chatham House here in the UK so what is she making of today's meeting? I think the meeting is a really important signal of intent both from Iran and Saudi Arabia's side that they remain committed to this process to ironing out further details of the agreement and to ultimately of course resuming diplomatic ties.
Is there substance to it or is it more of a photo opportunity? I think they both benefit from the photo opportunity. This sends I think a very clear message that a rapprochement is underway but the devil of course will be in the details and it remains to be seen what role if any China will play in making sure both sides remain compliant and take this. forward.
Yeah I want to talk about the Chinese role in a minute but in terms of what they've discussing bilateral visits of private sector and official delegations talking about restarting flights between the two countries at those significant developments do you think? They are and they are important steps that will put meat on the bones of this relationship.
Iran is seeking of course greater economic integration in the region is desperately in need of investment to push back against US sanctions but the real compromises will come in regional ties. Iran has supposedly committed to respecting sovereignty and to supporting Saudi Arabia's efforts to reducing conflict in Yemen and it's unclear what that is going to look like, what the terms and conditions of that agreement will look like and of course from the Saudi side there has been an acknowledgement that it would roll back support for diaspora based media that has been important in sort of supporting protests that we saw in Iran towards the end of last year.
Could though this bring real peace to that country that has essentially been the location of a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, Yemen? I think it would be a first step but there are multiple conflicts going on in Yemen. It's not just in Iran, Saudi conflict, there are internal divides in Yemen that also have to be addressed and here I think the support of the international community is really important.
The UN envoy has been trying to bring all sides together and the US has placed a lot of investment in capital in mediating as well. So reducing tensions is important but it's not going to end the war.
And what of Beijing's role, much noted, interesting that this meeting happening in the Chinese capital on the day that President Macron, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen are also in China, a signal, you might say that China is saying that we are the guys that can bring these two countries together. Do you think China's role is going to remain crucial?
Well, I think that China very much benefits from its ability to bring these two countries together. I don't think there are very many other states right now that would have been able to do that, including the United States. It's important to remember it doesn't have diplomatic ties with Iran and hasn't met directly with Iran for quite some time. So this has been an easy win for China. And I think that China is trying to showcase that it has the potential to be a bolder, multilateral international player. I'm not quite sure if China has the capacity to ensure accountability and to be sort of the compliance officer. The Middle East is messy. The divides are quite deep and long-standing. There's quite a big history of mistrust. So we have to watch and see if Beijing is going to do more than the symbolic photo up.
Dr. Sanam Vacil from the Think Tank Chattam House.
来自智库查塔姆研究院的萨南姆·瓦希尔博士。
A 26-year-old Russian woman called Darya Tripurva has been charged with terrorism following Sunday's bomb attack in St Petersburg that killed the popular Russian pro-war blogger who went by the name of Ladlen Tatarsky with more than 500,000 followers on Telegram. He was part of an influential if-looser sortment of people who support the invasion of Ukraine but are critical of its commanders.
BBC Monitoring's Russia Editor Vitaly Shevchenko has been examining the phenomenon. The sound of Russian missiles being launched at Ukraine from one of countless videos posted by Russian Walker respondents. Known as Vaynegorye, they usually claim to have specialist military knowledge and access to Russian troops. Some are employed by Kremlin-controlled media, but others blog on social media, apparently without any links to any particular media outlet.
BBC Monitoring 的俄罗斯编辑维塔利·舍甫琴科一直在研究这一现象。这是俄罗斯“沃克”回答者(指在社交媒体平台上发布内容的人)发布的数不清的视频之一,展示了俄罗斯向乌克兰发射导弹的声音。他们通常声称拥有特殊的军事知识和接触俄罗斯部队的渠道,并受克里姆林宫控制的媒体雇佣。但还有一些人没有与特定媒体机构联系,只是在社交媒体上发布博客。
Yuriy Padalakka is one of the most popular of such bloggers. If Ukrainian states still exists after the war in any shape or form, that would mean a defeat for us. That's why the only question is where Russia's border with Poland would lie. That's it.
The emergence of such bloggers after the initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014 heralded a new era of war reporting in Russia. For many of them, supporting the war does not necessarily mean supporting the top brass. Here's how Rubar, a telegram channel with more than a million followers, reacted when the Defence Ministry states silent about a rapid Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv region in September last year.
Dear Defence Ministry, we know that you see this and many other telegram channels which allow themselves to criticise the progress of the special military operation as traitors, vocators and fake news. You don't like us because we don't know the party line, but now is not the time to stay silent.
And it's criticism like this of the military authorities that makes war bloggers stand out from the all-pervasive Kremlin-controlled propaganda. But prominent Walker respondents employed by traditional pro-Kremlin media tend to be much more accepting of the official line. One of the most prominent of these is Alexander Kots, who works for the Komsomolska-Pravda tabloid and often reports from the front line. Responding to the killing of Lydlian Tatarski, Kots, similarly to Russian officials, pointed the finger of blame squarely at Ukraine.
Earth must be set alight under every Ukrainian function, regardless of whether they are wearing a uniform. These people must be destroyed.
每一个乌克兰人都必须点燃地球,无论他们是否穿着制服。这些人必须被摧毁。
Much of the content posted by Walker respondents is extremely graphic. One of the most infamous examples is Greyzone, which posted footage of the apparent murder of a traitor who is a sledgehammer in November last year. Russian war reporters often call for the destruction of Ukraine as an independent state. For example, Yuri Kachinok has said the very Ukrainian identity must be destroyed. Even cancer can be cured, but Ukrainianism? Never. It's a type of satanism that can only be destroyed with one thing, fire, or consuming fire that will cleanse this filth. Kachinok has more than 400,000 subscribers on telegram.
That was BBC Monitoring's Russia editor Vitaly Shevchenko, you're listening to News Hour from the BBC World Service.
你正在收听BBC世界服务的新闻小时,我是BBC监视的俄罗斯编辑维塔利·谢申科。
At 417 AM on 6 February, exactly two months ago, massive earthquake struck parts of southern Turkey and Syria. We now know that more than 50,000 people were killed in Turkey alone. In Syria, where the numbers are harder to quantify, it was almost 6,000.
There are people still trapped under rubble. I have a friend living in this apartment. His children were rescued from the top floor, may God give us a speedy recovery. I was sleeping when my wife suddenly washed me up. The quake was very severe, very scary. It took almost two minutes until the shaking stopped. With so many affected thousands of stories soon emerged of survivors trying to dig people out of the rubble of smashed buildings and upturned lives.
Three days after the quake struck, News Hour made contact with a man from Antakia, one of Turkey's worst hit cities, his name Hassan Aslan. Five of his close relatives died, and if he includes friends and acquaintances, he knows about 50 victims, although he did manage to dig a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old boy from the rubble, their members of his extended family.
When we first spoke to him, Hassan was living in a plastic greenhouse with 20 family members and no blankets. The nights were getting down to minus five degrees. Third quake hit. I couldn't understand what's happening because it was all strong. My aunts and my aunts, my son and my aunts, grandchildren, they were in the collapse of building and most of them couldn't survive. In the next day, we tried to find them. We could take two little children. One of them is nine years old and the other one is seven years old. We could take them out of the rubble. We tried for about seven hours because their uncle was with us. They're okay now, but their father and their mother are dead. My aunts was taken out from rubble today. We are going to take her to the grave yard, maybe in an hour. She's also dead.
Two months on, life in the earthquake zone is less about the struggle to stay alive. There is food, there are tents and blankets, more of a mental challenge for people living in a sort of limbo with no apartment, no job and rubble all around. I got through to Hassan a couple of hours ago to hear how he's getting on.
Things are a little bit better than before because we have tents here, we have heaters, we have blankets. So you and your sister in one tent? Yeah, I stay in one tent with my sister and my father and my mother stay in another tent. Staying in a tent is a difficult process for us because you can feel the wind outside, you can feel the rain, you can hear the rain and sometimes it can be cold. So it's a difficult experience for all of us.
Do you have any idea how long you're going to be staying there in a tent? Oh, I have no idea honestly because we need new houses, it's not clear when we are going to have them or will we have them in the near future or not? We are not sure about it.
So you're in the garden of your father's house, is that right? Is that where the tent is pitched? Yeah, that's correct, that's correct. The family is together but in very different and difficult circumstances. They will think it's a slow, I can just see the lorries and the excavators they are carrying the rubble out of the city. It is what's happening in the city at the moment.
Slow, you've got no idea how long you're going to be in these circumstances but you are determined to stay. Yeah, I'm determined to stay here. I sometimes, I sometimes move to other cities and stay for a few days but I come back and I really want to live in my city because I was born here and I have been here for more than 30 years. So I want to stay here.
Antacas is an historic city. We had beautiful old buildings here before, but I really like this city and it makes me feel good. It's a multicultural city. Antacas are very old and multicultural city. There are many people from different religions from different places of the world.
And what about daily life? You're an English teacher. You used to have lots of pupils. You had a busy kind of life. What do you do now during the day? What am I doing? I sometimes, I sometimes use the school. I meet my friends in the daytime. We empty our houses nowadays. Yeah, we are emptying them before they are demolished.
Many buildings in your ancient city were destroyed, weren't they? It doesn't look anything like dead before. Yeah, more than half of the buildings are destroyed.
Does it feel like the same city though? No, never, never. Because in the city center, there are nobody living there. And if you pass through the city at night, you can feel the loneliness there. It's really quiet and there is nothing inside the cities except for the lorries and some excavators.
So what makes you want to stay so much? What makes you want to remain there in an attempt? We feel better here. I think my friends, my family, my family members, they are all here. So I don't want to leave this city because we have memories. I have many friends who died here. I have many relatives who died here. It really makes us feel depressed a little bit and desperate, especially when I see the houses. The record houses here we feel desperate, we feel hopeless. But I don't want to move to another city.
But you've also said you're afraid of the future as well. What do you mean by that? Yeah, I'm afraid of the future with respect to the houses honestly. Because it may take more than five years or maybe ten years to have new good houses. It's really a long time. I mean, I don't know how many days or how many years we are going to leave in the tent. It makes me feel hopeless.
And how do you feel when you go to other places, you mention you leave, and go to the seaside, for example? When I go inside the tall buildings, I really feel afraid because of the fair of the earthquake here. It reminds you when you're going to a tall building, you're reminded of the collapse of buildings. Yeah, it reminds me the collapse of buildings. It reminds me the earthquake itself. But after staying there two or three days, I really feel better because I remember my old life and it makes me feel relaxed. It gives me hope.
There's a huge destruction here in Antarctica. I can be one of the helpers. I want to be one of the helpers. It sounds like you have a responsibility to the city. Yeah, I have a responsibility. Yeah, and I'm going to stay here. Whatever happens.
Earthquake survivor Hassan Aslan on why he is staying put in the southern Turkish city of Antarctica. Today is exactly two months since that quake, which killed more than 50,000 people. And that brings us to an end of this edition of NewsHour from me, James Kamara Sami, and the rest of the team here in London. Thanks very much for listening. I'll be back with you this time tomorrow, but for now, more of us. Goodbye.