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tv   BBC News America  PBS  June 21, 2024 5:30pm-6:00pm PDT

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>> this is bbc world news america. as fhting continues in gaza the u.n. warns more than a million will face catastrophic level of starve vacation by july. the u.s. supreme court reviews a gun bill. we look at the role of billionaire donors in the u.s. presidential campaign. ♪ >> welcome to world news america. intense fighting between israel and hamas continued in gaza amid concerns over the possibility of a wilder regional war. in southern gaza, forces hit the
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designated humanitarian zone on friday. at least 25 killed and 30 were injured. an estimated half a million displaced palestinians are shell sheltering there. the past months have seen a series of retaliatory attacks between israel and hezbollah. the dire warning was issued on friday. >> elation continues as if an all-out war was imminent. the risk for the conflict in the middle east to wild season real and must be removed. a camp that es far beyond the
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boarders and frankly, beyond imagination. let's be clear -- the people of region and the people of the world cannot afford lebanon to become another gaza. >> the humanitarian situation in gaza is worsening after eight months of war. the u.s. military said on thursday that a temporary pier off the coast of gaza has been reearninged, allowing the resumption of aimed deliveries. more than 6,000 tons of aid were delivered on thursday, the largest single day of aid to date. the equivalent of 38 truckloads, well below the hundreds of truckloads a day that officials say is needed to support enough people in gaza. israeli army recently enacted a tactical pause in fighting but theorld health organization said that the pause has had in no impact on the delivery of
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badly needed humanitarian supply is. >> announcing this daily hold next tot border crossing. the israeli army said nearly a week ago was the idea was to allow the back load of aid to be cleared. something like a thousand truckloads of aid there but people say they've not been able to take slang of these so-called tactical pawses mainly because of the lawlessness there is now in southern gaza. mainly because of organized armed groups narh smuggle and using weapons to stop their trucks as they come in. at the same time there's been a breakdown in their own systems that's happened since israel's
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incursion of rafah. more than a million people were newly displaced and at the same time human contain aid losing and important rafa border crossing between gaza and egypt. in rafah itself, there are fighting still going on in the fast couple of days, particularly intense street and palestinian armed groups tos the north and west of rafa with intense shelling going on and there have been deadly great dealy strikes in parts of gaza city. a remind really that, gaza, as the humanitarian crisis deepens there it remains an active war zone. >> and the united nations estimates more than 1 million people in gaza will face catastrophic levels of strafer vacation by the end of next
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month. doctors fear the situation will only get worse, especially for young children. shortages of drinking water in high temperatures are putting many lives at risks. we have this report and a warning, it contains some distreing images from the start. hydratednd malnourishished. her father is trying to bring comfort but scorching heat and a lack of water has brought his daughter close to death. >> you can't imagine how bad conditions are. the water is definitely contaminated. >> and with the houses destroyed, hundreds of thousands of gassens are living under canvas with little protection from the scorching sun. getting water, whether it's clean or not, is a daily struggle. long queues form at distribution
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centers. the u.n. says 2/3 of the strip's water and sanitation system, poor at the best of times, has been destroyed. international effort to reestablish water and sewage networks we have lost between 170 and 200 kilometers of pipes which has been completely destroyed along with the wells and the water tanks. >> the united neighings has warned machine than a million gassens are facing the -- gazans are facing the highest level of starve vase by the middle of july. israel strongly disputes using starvation has a weapon of war and its ministers strongly deny there is a humanitarian criticize. he is 9 years old. he has bren really a palsy and enlymsy but de hydration and
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malknew frustration means he's now in the hospital. his mother says before the war he was healthy. >> where we live now, it's long way for water.a now i'm worried my other children will be sick. >> on friday, doctors without borders said that itight have to stop or drastically reduce some of its medical activities unless medical supplies are significantly replenished in the coming days. i spoke with a doctor many gaza. you've recently returned from gaza where you were working at hospitals. can you tell us what the situation was like? >> the situation looks very bad. during the rafa offensive, which continues to take place, several health facilities had to be closed, including some supported or return by our organization.
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it's shocking when you have to close medical facilities due to insety. at the same time, the very few hospitals that are still running in the gaza strip, what we see is that they are congested, they are overloaded. they are receivings casualty events on a regular basis. it's a completely unsustainable and unacceptable situation. >> we understand thamel supplies are running very low as well. can you tell us how doctors and nurses are treating patients at the moment in gaza? >> it's a very critical situation. it is very difficult for medical professionals to do their job under these circumstance. i spent four weeks inside gaz as doctors without borders' emergency coordinator. during the time i was there, we
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couldn't get supplies in at all. not even simplmedicine. not even gauze to treat wounds so surprise essentially are going to run out at a certain point. the quantity of supplies coming into gaza before the closure of the rafah border was already insituate. the situation has deteriorated event more after the closure of the border. the situation is unsustainable and unacceptable and we were heading for much, muc worse times than we're already facing. >> and your organization is now saying that it might have to stop or severely limit its activities in gaza unless there's a significant replenishment of medical supplies in the coming days. if doctors without border have to shut down or severely restrict work there, what would it mean for medical care there? >> well, we were already working under very difficult circumstances. all the health eightors are
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working under the same type of shortage. it wase a catastrophey. the capacity to provide medical to the people is already bad and it will only get worse. it was already horrible before and we have essentially run out of words, of adjectives to describe the seriousness of the situation. it's appalling. horrible. >> what types of surprise are most direly needed right now? >> we are talking about everything and not original about medical supplies. we are talking about humanitarian supplies that allow humanitarian responses to happen so i'll give you an example. at the last remaining hospital in the central area, in the middle area of the gaza strip where our teams work and
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support. there are problems with fuel. very essential things. without fuel, you cannot run the generators and you cannot have electricity for the hospital. within space of one week, they faced fuel and power shortages three times. you can imagine what that means for, for example patients who shall in need of oxygen. so we were really talking about essential things. to run any humanitarian response in the circumstances. >> and as you said, the fighting is ongoing. on one hand you have palestinians who say the israeli forces are specifically targeting hospitals and medical centers. on the other hand israel is saying that hamas has deliberately embedded itself into hospital complexes. can you tell us what you witnessed? >> what we see working in hospitals is a massive influx of patients. men, women, children following
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air strikes and be it is the case in rafa where we closed essentially all our cases. it is the case in the hospital. an influx of patients, sometimes hundred at a time in a situation that is already impossible so we are really asking the impossible from these hospitals at the moment. >> we mentioned the high temperatures in the region and more than a thousand pele from several countries are now reported to have died in extreme heat while on the annual hajj pilgrimage. saudi arabia defended the kingdom's handling of the event but across the region there is widespread outrage. in tunisia the minister sacked his -- president sacked his minister of foreign affairs
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after many pilgrims died. in jordan, authorities detained several travel agents who organized unofficial travel routes to the hajj and in egypt, officials plan to investigate those who broker thousands to saudi arabia without the required permits. our report met a family of one of the victims. >> a family in mrning off the loss of their mother. the 0-year-olds went to the mecca for hajj. a duty that led to her death. among hundreds of egyptian pilgrims who lost their lives while performing rituals in the unforgiving saudi heat. her children believe she died of exhaustion. >> i screamed and couldn't believe it. she phoned my brother and said
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she felt her soil was leaving her body. >> pill grips may get a visitor's visa but in, too, has turned out to be very costly. lling her jewelry to pay fors. the trip, she used a broker. pourwater or r headr she was because of the heat. she could barely open her eyes. she told me the bus dropped her 12 kilometers awayroarafat and l this way on foot. >> a broker took vac of her willingness to go. they had no accommodation. official pilgrims had irconditioning and meals. my mom's death broke me.
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>> mostly old people who put their lifetime savings in to make in ritual journey. for them, it was a dream to go to mecca. they didn't know that they would never comeack. families here have been telling me they have no idea who will be held accountable for this tragedy. the egyptian authorities now say they are going to investment the tour companies that broker unofficial hajj trips. the saudi inspects have officially banned them from joining hajj but they eventually change third mind. it appears no preparations have been in place to handle this overflow of people. fears are growing that the death toll will rise even further and more egyptian families might be paying fare well to their loved ones.
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"bbc news," northern egypt. >> here in the u.s., the supreme court upheld a law that prevents people with domestic violence restraining orders from owning a gun. the 8-1 decision is the first major ruling on gun rights since 2022. president joe biden welcomed the decision in a statement saying "as a result of today's ruling, survivors of domestic violence and their families will still be able to count on criminal protections just as they have for the past three decades." our north american core respond has the details. >> in case was wrought by a texas drug dealer who had threatened to shoot his girlfriend if she reported he had assaulted her. she got a restraining order against him, which led to his gun license being row vogued and him being disarmed and he argued
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that that was a violation of his right to bear arms, the second amendment but in a majority 8-1 ruling by the court, the court said, no, it. didn't. that actually the constitution does permit laws that strip guns from people that are deemed dangerous. it's worth mentioning that this was one of many challenges that that was brought to the supreme court after they ruled in 202 on a major ruling in which -- it was a new york ruling and it basically put strict limits on guns outside the home so in some respects, is case really tested the scope of that law and how far the court would go so in many respects, this is a victory for gun rights advocates. there was one dissenting voice, the conservative justice clarence thomas who is very pro guns and he said not a hill?
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historical regulation justifies the statute at issue but this big federal law does stay in place. >> continued trump -- donald trump's felony conviction in may sparked an avalanche of fundraising including a big sum from timothy mellon of the mellon group. that outpaced donations to democrat donations in may by nearly $60 million so president biden's campaign and the democratic participant raised $5 million that month. trump's campaign had previously lagged behind biden's. both campaigns are ramping you do nations from billionaires. and new york billionaire mike bloomberg has donated nearly $20
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million to biden's super paks. we can talk about this with teddy, a campaign finance reporter for "the new york times." great to have you. for an international all of a sudden, how is it possible to donate such large sums of money to politicns? >> after the united states decision about 15 years ago which was a supreme court ruling that made all this possible, major donors can contribute unlimited amounts to support american politicians, including people running for president, as long as the money is donated to outside groups. what that means is you can donate $50 million to support donald trump. you just can't donate it directly to donald trump. you can direct it to the a friend of donald trump's or a former aide who can spend the
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money on his behalf. >> what impact does that have on the outcome of an election? >> well, that would have been an easier question to answer 10 years ago. after that decision was made by the supreme court, we saw tons and tons of money flow into u.s. election and we always thought if you have more money through a campaign you're more likely to win because that gets spent on television advertises or on hiring more aides. associated with winning the election. these days, it's not necessarily that clear. there have been plenty of times when people spent tons of money and lost and times when people raised lots of money from small-money donors and win. if you're the trump campaign you'd rather have the money than not. >> of course. timothy mellon donating $50
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million to trump. he's also been a donor to j.f.k. kennedy jr. what about these donation >> me llon sent the fund for trump the day after he was convicted of the felony charges. mellon is a die hard trump guy. he believes that trump followed through on his promise during his first term and it is a big believer that he should be brought back and obviously he has some strong opinions about the conviction of his favorite president. yes, he's supported robert f. kennedy jr. in the past, as recently as just a month or two ago. good question what that means. democrats would argue this show
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that is timothy mellon and robert f. kennedy jr. are just spoilers. people who are supporting kennedy jr. to be a craw in the side of joe biden or maybe split loyalties. we don't really know. them think mellon is a bit of a recluse and he doesn't really do interviews. >> we are seeing a handful of billionaires, tech moguls, he thought saying that they're throwing their support behind donald trump. at the same time president biden has presided over a really strong economy that's benefited wall street. high with we seeing this? >> voters aren't rational and neither are billion anniversary. the strength of the economy aside, these are individual voters who are not always voting based on self-interests. i was based in silicon valley
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for six or seven years. there are lots of wealthy tech executives who are voting based on who goran governed bett during covid or concerns about e.d.i. or beliefs about israel. a misknower about political donors is that they're purely rational actors. even though some of them felt good about the trump economy, donors are people too and reacting to what they see on the nulls like rest of us. >> this boon for donald trump after the conviction, do you think it can last? >> yeah, there's going to be a sentencing date later on, which could be another kind of boon for some digital fundraising at least. i would say you are only get convicted once but possibly you
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get convicted multiple times depending on how the other trials end up. this was an historic day and obviously an historic fundraising day as well. hard to see this being totally rep my cackle but -- rememberly capable but who knows? >> thank you for joining us. two baluga whales have been rescued from the ukrainian frontline city of kharkiv. the whale, a 15-year-old male and a 15-year-old female arrived in delicate health at the ocean graphic aquarium in have lensa, which will be their new home. kharkiv has evacuated sever seals, sea lions and dolphins since the war started. good news there. thank you so much for watching world news america and do stay with "bbc news."
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announcer: funding for presentation of this program is provided by... financial services firm, raymond james. 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. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ announcer: get the free pbs app now and stream the best of pbs.
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wow, you get to watch all your favorite stuff. it's to die for. now you won't miss a thing. this is the way. xfinity internet. made for streaming. william brangham. amna nawaz and geoff bennett are away. the supreme court upholds the gun control law that prohibits domestic violence abusers from owning guns. we take a closer loo

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