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tv   BBC News The Context  PBS  March 27, 2024 5:00pm-5:31pm PDT

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pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. announcer: and now, "bbc news" - >> the whole bridge just fell - down. >> the audio reveals the moment authorities saw a ship crash into a bridge in baltimore. these are live pictures from baltimore, where it's around 3:00 in the afternoon and conditions are hampering the recovery efforts for the six missing construction workers who are now presumed dead. the u.n. high commissioner for human rights says israel is significantly to blame for the appalling humanitarian situation in gaza. a new report finds a 10-month-old baby who was murdered by his parents should have been better protected. check your passport. the message to millions of
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britons planning a trip to europe to avoid being caught out by a 10 year rule. we will explain all in a moment. also, coming up on the world today, there has been a massive increase in the discharge of raw sewage into england's rivers and seas, adding to public anger in the conduct of water companies. and we meet the real-life hero of an incredible survival story, dr. roberto canasta from the andes plane crash, joins us later in the show. ♪ hello and a very good welcome to the world today from bbc news. we start this hour in the u.s. city of baltimore where the audio of the first responder dispatch radio because as the key bridge collapsed have been released. in the audio, officers are discussing halting traffic and alerting the workers on the bridge when a call comes in
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reporting the bridge has faen down. take a listen. >> one of you guys on the southside, one of you guys on the north side, holding up traffic on the key bridge. there is a ship approaching that just lost their steering. we have to stop all traffic. >> i am on route to the south side. >> i'm holding traffic now. we stopped prior to the bridge so i will have all traffic stopped. >> is there a crew working on the bridge right now? >> stopped traffic right now. >> if we can stop traffic, just make sure no one is on the bridge right now. i'm not sure if there is a crew up there. we might want to inform whoever the foreman is. >> 10-4, once the other unit gets here, i will ride up on the bridge. traffic stopped at this time.
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once you get here, i will tell the workers on the key bridge and stop the outer loop. >> the whole bridge just fell down. the whole bridge just collapsed. >> that is correct. >> traffic was stopped. >> i can't get to the other side. the bridge is down. we are going to have to get someone on the others to get up here and stop traffic coming northbound on the bridge. >> i am holding all traffic northbound. >> let's take you to the live shot now. this is what we are seeing there today. bad weather is hampering efforts now to both look for those construction workers who are of course presumed dead but also to investigate -- to start
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investigating what has happened. crews have already found the data recorder of the ship. officials are now apparently looking into whether dirty fuel may have caused the vessel to lose power. the six missing construction workers are now presumed dead. there is one person who is in critical condition also. the vessel is registered in singapore and the port authority says it passed two inspections last year. the container vessel lost power after departing from baltimore sport. here's what the governor of maryland has been saying. >> the top priority for me is still the recovery. i promise these families that i would instruct every single asset that we have to focus on that search-and-rescue. air, land, and sea assets to focus on search and rescue now that -- folks on search-and-rescue. my promise is this: i will
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devote every resource to making sure you receive csure. >> here is pete buttigieg on the timeframe for rebuilding the bridge. >> when i will say in the case of the bridge is that the original bridge took five years to construct. that does not necessarily mean it will take five years to replace. but that tells you what went into that original structure going up. we need to get a sense of the conditions for the parts that look ok to the naked eye but we just don't know yet in terms of their foundational infrastructure so it's going to be some time. it's difficult to overstate the impact of this collision. it's not just as big as a building, it's really as big as a block, 100,000 tons all going in this pier all at once. >> the recovery of the ships data recorder has added a key part to the investigation into the incidents. we spoke to u.s. marine safety consultants david who is based in baltimore and asked him what the investigators will be looking for. david: one of the key things
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they will be looking at is the data recorder which is similar to the black box on an aircraft. they will delve into the maintenance tracker on the generators and anything that might be present. >> in your experience, what are the most likely factors that could lead to a cargo ship like this hitting a bridge in the way that took place in baltimore? dad: as you mentioned earlier, my first thought was fuel, based on experience. if you lose an engine like that, it's obviously mechanical. it could be human error. it could be that it was the fuel -- could be a blocked strainer. >> why would fuel be impacted? david: if you have dirty fuel that is not atomizing properly as it goes into the pistons, it would block the injectors and cause a loss of the machinery.
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so you heard a little bit about the impending investigation into the incident. if you want to get any more on that story, you can go to the bbc's website or the bbc's news app. the u.n. high commissioner for human rights has told the bbc that israel is significantly to blame for the appalling humanitarian situation in gaza where famine is looming. these are some of the latest images of destruction in gaza. israel had obligations as the occupying power and was placing unreasonable demands on the delivery of aid. he has been speaking to our international editor, jeremy bowen, if he had evidence to back up his previous comments, suggesting israel may be using starvation as a weapon of war. jeremy: you suggested yourself a few days ago that israel might be using starvation as a weapon of war. do you have more evidence of that? >> the reason why we said this
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is because of the report that independent panel of expertse that identify famine as a very serious risk with starvation starting from now until mid-may if there isn't a massive humanitarian assistance coming into gaza. so that brings up the question, with all the restrictions that we currently see, whether there is a plausible claim to be made that starvation is or may be used as a method of war. >> and that is a breach of the laws of war, effectively a war crime, right? if proven. >> if proven, it is a war crime indeed. >> looking in general at international humanitarian law in the course of this war, is there any sense in which it has been respected? are all sides
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breaking the rules? i mean, how would you characterize it right now? >> it is absolutely clear what happened on the seventh and the eighth of october by hamas and some of the other groups. it's unconscionable, a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and issue national rights law. you cannot willfully kill civilians en masse, cannot take hostages, cannot commit sexual violence and rape. you cannot go into israel. all of these are very clear, flagrant violations of international humanitarian law, international human rights law. at the same time, the brutality of the attack by israel and the method of warfare, including -- i mean, if you look at the facts, if you have 32,000 people having been killed within a couple of months, out of whom 70% are women and children, it begs the question of the
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proportionality of the response, so yes, these are very serious issues coupled with forcible relocation, coupled with forcible displacement, coupled with the lack of humanitarian assistance coming in. so all of this combined questions the respect to international humanitarian law on both sides. >> you are saying questions -- you say there is no doubt about hamas. are there any doubts about israel? >> i mean, you always have to prove the intent but collective punishment -- the collective punishment that was declared was the siege and is indeed amounts to a war crime and it needs to be dealt as such. >>'s comments come after a u.n. colleague, that u.n. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied palestinian territories said she believes israel has committed acts of genocide in gaza. she presented her report to u.n. member states in gene on tuesday. israel has already dismissed her
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findings. it's ambassador to the u.n. in geneva has described the report as an obscene inversion of reality and accused her of questioning israel's right to exist. while my colleague also spoke to david, spokesman for the israeli government before her comments. he was heavily critical of the un. >> they u.n. -- the u.n. it is hopelessly disornized and these are images unfortunately which are coming out of gaza and you are not showing the images of bustling markets, which there are in southern gaza, you are showing more negative images. these are of course the images which hamas wants you to see. i can guarantee you one thing, that no one in hamas is starving. hamas steel the a's and then they sell it on the black market for vastly inflated prices and it is the u.n. which unfortunately has been grossly inefficient.
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>> now, scores of people are being turned away at airports when they try to board a flight to the e.u. because their passports don't need post brexit entry criteria. as many as 32 million passport holders are being warned to check the issue and expert rebate details on their passports. here is a look at the rules. e.u. countries won't accept k. passports issued more than 10 years ago. you also need to renew your passport if it has less than three months left at any time while you are traveling. this is all because the u.k. office previously added another nine months from an old passport onto a new one, meaning it has were issued between march 2014 and september 2018 uld be valid for up to 10 years and nine months. post brexit, if your passport is more than 10 years old, it has less than three month before it expires. our correspondent spoke to a
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person caught out by this complicated rule. here is the story. >> he was on his way to friends with his fiancee to visit family. they are making their way through the budget drop, security, and passport control at the border gate. they were in for a surprise. >> i had 10 yearplus extra month on the passport which i did not think would be a problem. >> he fell foul of the 10 year rule. it was issued more than 10 years before the date they were traveling which meant he would be refused entry into any e.u. country. >> they just said, sorry, you are not coming on. >> they told you you could board, --could not board, how did you feel? >> gutted. we were surprised more than anything. we checked online and thought it was fine and then we were told at the gate. >> confused? so am i. let's speak to the travel edir for the independent. simon, ok, let me get this straight, 10 years is the maximum amount of time you are
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allowed to have a passport for in terms of going to the e.u., but a lot of passports have issued between 2014 and have more than 10 years on them and that is where the problem starts? simon: you are absolutely right and thank you for that very good exposition. there is to test that any person from a third country which has visa free status and that includes now the u.k. as well as everywhere from the u.s. to venezuela and from argentina to macau, so lots and lots of countries have 60 of them where your passport has to meet two conditions. it can't have had its 10th birthday and secondly, it must have at least three months left on the day you intend to leave. that is not -- they issued passports for more than 10 years.
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that was not a problem when we were in the e.u. now, i'm afraid it is. i'm speaking to you from the liverpool airport and i'm here because tomorrow, which is going to be one of the busiest days of the year in european aviation, there will, i fear, be a large number of people turned away because they are unaware of this rule. unfortunately, the airlines, although they ask you for some details before you board a flight, they are doing that for security purposes because the government has demanded they are not doing it to check whether or not you are going to be allowed into your destination country. >> so actually, you can end up like his case study, getting to the airport, getting through all of the rigmarole's, and getting told you cannot board the plane. tell me this -- i have been talking about this with my colleagues outside of the newsroom. because of what we have been saying here on the bbc, do you think the will be a massive run-on passports and getting passports? do you think if you applied now,
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you would get a really big delay anyway? are we causing a bigger problem now by underlining this to people? >> i think it is a really portant thing that the edc has been doing in drawing attention to this problem and mark iso be congratulated for that. it is just absolutely essential that you don't create an unnecessary burden on the passport office because it's really important also that it's only the european union that cares tuppence about the age of your passport since it was issued. every other country in the world only cares about the ex paris date of your passport so for example, if i have a passport that is 10 years and seven months old and i want to go to america and i have a couple of months left, nobody has a problem with thatsame with australia, same with tunisia, and many other countries, so don't necessarily apply for a new passport. there is unfortunately huge
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amounts of misinformation on the internet, would you believe, and it is important if i may just restate two conditions you gave, your passport cannot have had its 10th birthday and it must have at least three months left on the day you intend to leave the european union. >> as always, you have explained it so clearly. thank you very much for coming onto the show and expanding that. good luck with covering all the travel chaos that will happen tomorrow. still to come on the world today, england's rivers and seas have seen a record wave of sewage being spilled directly into them. we are going to ask why and what is being done to stop it. around the world and across the u.k., this is the world today on bbc news. ♪
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♪ ♪ >> children's wooden and shannon
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were convicted of his murder and sentenced to life in prison after killing the child on christmas day in 2020. our midlands correspondent has the story. >> his family said he was a happy, chuckling baby. the authorities knew he was at risk and so he was taken into care shortly after birth. for his first nine months, he thrived. he was safe and looked after. he died on christmas day, 2020, weeks after being returned to the care of his parentsstephen bowden, and shannon marston. he had suffered 100 30 separate injury -- 130 separate injuries. the pair were living in squalor and cared more about buying drugs than their son. many agencies were involved in the supervision but the system failed finley. >> a lot of what is in this 50 page report i have seen before
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in previous safeguarding reviews concerning the deaths of other children. for information sharing, for instance. in his case, it was another major factor and that was the pandemic. >> in the same seven month period, they were also killed by adults who should have been looking after them. in his case, lockdowns meant his parents were able to evade scrutiny. contact with the authorities was made remotely and not in person. meetings were missed and reports not shared. they pretended everything was ok and no one knew differently. >> if you work with children, the worst possible thing is for a child to die. it is absolutely tragic. >> are you confident now that things would be done different? >> so our systems are much strengthened. that has been robustly tested during our recent inspection, so i am more confident, as you
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rightly say, we can never say never in these cases. >> last year, they were convicted of murder and jailed for life. they have to serve at least 27 and 29 years respectively. they subjected him to unimaginable cruelty. he was a heavy drug user. bowden had 32 previous convictions and yet it was deemed safe to allow them to care for their son. today's report recommends many changes. >> this is about making sure that what didn't happen and should have happened will happen and is happening into the future. as i have said, we make sure we move forward and make the improvements that are necessary. >> one relative to scrap him as a beautiful ray of sunlight. it is hoped those improvements will be part of finley's legacy. phil mackey, derbyshire. >> the amount of sewage dumped
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into rivers and seas in england has increased dramatically. according to the environment agency, there were 3.6 million hours of spills last year and that is more than double the previous year's number. it has led to scenes like this, untreated sewage being discharged directly into the water, contaminating seas and rivers and causing huge amounts of harm to wildlife. our environment correspondent, jenna fischer, has stepped into the water to explain just why the levels of sewage discharge have been going up. >> the big difference between 2023 and 20 in many ways was simply because it rained a lot more in 2023 than it did in the previous year. and the way the sewage system works here is that sewage from people's homes mixes with rainwater, storm water in the pipes when it has towards treatment plants so if there is a lot of rain as there was last year, it means the system cannot cope and instead of it backing up into people's homes, there
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are effectively rease valves a bit like this overflow behind me which basically allows the raw sewage, the stormwater to come out and flow out into rivers, streams, the sea, to stop it backing up into people's homes and that is the data we had today, effectively all of the overflows like this now have monitors fitted onto them which report back to the water companies and indeed ultimately to the environment agency here how many times they spilled and for how long for. so the data that has been published today from all the water companies inngland shows a doubling of the hours effectively in which these overflows spilled and a big increase in the number of spills taken place as well. >> that was jenna fischer giving us a bit of an update into what exactly has happened. the figures speak for themselves. the amount of pollution being put into rivers and seas around
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england. i'm sure this is also a problem for many countries around the world. sewage has become a major political issue in this country as the parties campaign ahead of the local elections in england which is happening in may. this is what the partiesave been saying about today's news. >> it's very disappointing but sadly not surprising. i think it is another sign that regulation isn't doing enough in this sector and that is the reason why the greens are calling for the water companies to be brought back into public control where we can make sure we clean up this industry and stop the sewage spill edges. >> it's an environmental catastrophe and they have done nothing for so long and that is why liberal democrats are saying we need tougher regulation, sewage tax on the water. we need to shake up this industry. >> we need to do more but the most important thing -- this is a big concern.
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what really happened is we started monitoring much more. in 2010, only 7% of overflows were monitored at all and now it's 100%. we just know much more but we have also put in tougher regulation and we put in tougher fines as well for water companies and most important, we put in more investment in two things, infrastructure but also specifically to end storm discharge overflows over a period of time. >> there are absolutely no to use it for what is going on. the government has chosen to do nothing while we are seeing record amounts of sewage being poured into our rivers, making kids sick if they go through a puddle. what labor will do is put a ban on the bonuses. they paid themselves 25 million pounds in bonuses. that money should have gone to fixing roads and infrastructure, not rewarding them. >> there are all the political viewpoints on that. the website as always has all
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the very latest and in-depth analysis of the stories including that onen the sewage issue in england. i am back in a announcer: funding for presentation of this program is provided by... financial services firm, raymond james. bdo. accountants and advisors. cunard is a proud supporter of public television. announcer: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation, pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ announcer: funding for presentation of this program is provided by... woman: a successful business owner sells his company and restores his father's historic jazz club with his son.

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