live from washington, this is bbc news. welcome to viewers on pbs in america. the us secretary of state heads to china amid growing tensions between the two countries. the gunman accused of killing 11 worshippers at a us synagogue is found guilty. the trial now moves to the sentencing phase. and the death of a pregnant of olympic star sparks a �*wake up call�* in the converstation about maternal mortality crisis. hello i'm helena humphrey. we begin with the pending diplomatic envoy between the us and china. us secretary of state, antony blinken, will visit beijing on sunday, making this the highest—profile visit to china by a us official since

president biden took office. it's been five years since a secretary of state has met with chinese counterparts, and us officials say expectations for the meeting are low. tensions have been steadily growing between the countries. earlier, my colleageue carl nasman spoke with congressman raja krishnamoorthi, ranking member of the house select committee on us competition with china. congressman, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us. now, blinken�*s visit to china, the first by a us secretary of state since 2018, the first major re—engagement between these two countries since the chinese spy balloon saga in february. what are you expecting to see out of this trip? well, i'm really glad it's happening. i commend the biden administration for being persistent in making sure this trip occurs. but as you know, this is going to be not an end but a means to an end, and i'm hopeful that it leads to more dialogue, more engagement and kind of stabilising the relationship.

taiwan likely to be on the agenda. we've seen several close calls in the taiwan straits — recently, a chinese warship crossed in front of a us destroyer. what should blinken be doing to reduce tensions between the us and china? i think for some reason, the ccp believes that may be not having military aid to military dialogue and having these dangerous manoeuvres and in international waters will somehow lead to us not exercising our freedom of navigation or, for that matter, all the different nations in that neighbourhood. but i think that what they do is they basically create an image of bullying — and as you know, nobody responds well to bullying — and instead of being de—escalation of the situation, perhaps pressure to escalate. and so, i think secretary blinken, i hope, will convey to them that this type

of aggressive manoeuvring, this type of aggression really is counterproductive for everyone in the neighbourhood. so, i would hope that he explains — and i trust that he will — that they understand that we will continue with our transit, that the taiwan strait and the south china sea and other national waters will continue to be areas where different nations exercise their freedom of navigation. and finally, we should have military—to—military dialogue. that is very crucial. now, blinken said on friday that he'd be raising the issue of illicit drugs on china. i know that you've been outspoken about fentanyl. a group of republicans is proposed there could be chinese sanctions to stem the flow of fenta nyl from the country. is that something that you would support? i'm not sure, i'd have to look at them more closely. but what we know is that the people's republic of china

is the source of the vast majority of the precursor chemicals that go into the fentanyl that is pressed and made into pills in mexico. and i think a lot of people on capitol hill are scratching their head, wondering how the ccp would not be aware of the production and the supply chain that leads to fentanyl in america. we've also heard reports in us media that china denies that the country is setting up a spying in cuba. it took days for the us to shoot down the suspected chinese spy balloon. do you think the white house is being tough enough on china's surveillance programme? well, i think, as the white house, i believe — said the other day — and its public information — there's long been such operations from cuba. not something that we want to celebrate, but we have to take countermeasures with regard to and to protect ourselves. i think here's the bottom line,

which is we know that the ccp operates satellites, operates other means of reconnaissance, and other nations do the same. that does not necessarily mean that our relationship needs to become worse than it is right now. crosstalk. just to hop in — just to emphasise, this suspected spying operation in cuba, that would be about 100 miles from the shores of the united states. sure, but i think with the white house said the other day is this has long been present in cuba — not that we should be celebrating it but we need to take countermeasures with regard to it. i think at this point, we have to stabilise the relationships, set up floor for the relationship and have dialogue. expectations seem to have been set fairly low for this trip by blinken. in your mind, what would be a success? honestly, i think that this would be successful if there's not a spy balloon that goes...

laughs. unintelligible. that seems to be a fairly low bar to clear. in addition to that, hopefully we'll have more dialogue. honestly, carl, at this point, we need to have more engagement and we need to have the opportunity to disabuse, for instance, notions in china that we are out to suppress them, repress them, prevent them from rising, attaining their potential. that is not what folks like myself or my committee members or anyone else wants. we want a relationship where we can engage but with guardrails, where we can preserve our values and interests and those of our partners and friends as well. i do want to be sure to ask you — now, blinken has called china's systemic detention of uyghurs in the country a genocide and crimes against humanity. what can the us do for the people of western china?

well, first of all, he's correct about that, and your viewers may know this, but upwards of two million uyghur people are in concentration camps right now, as we speak in xinjiang province. what we have to do in america is better enforce the uyghur falls prevention act which basically tries to remove goods that are produced by uyghur slave labour from our supply chains. and we're going to urge the uk, as well as ourfriends and allies around the world to enact similar measures because we have to end this genocide. congressman, you're the ranking member on the us select committee on us competition with china. it's one of the rarer committees in dc where you see bipartisan cooperation. what can we expect from your committee going forward this year? i think two things. the legislation creating the committee said we have to assess the economic, technological and security challenges posed by the ccp.

and on top of that, we have to propose ways to deal with it. so we're kind of simultaneously doing both. we had multiple public hearings. we need to be humble and yet serious and act in a bipartisan way in order to deal with a very, very challenging situation. thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us. thank you, carl. leaders from seven african countries are in kyiv seeking to broker a peace deal between ukraine and russia. they were taken on a tour of kyiv and shown a range of ukrainian military equipmentjust hours after an alleged missile attack on the capital. they then met with ukraine's president, volodymyr zelensky. the leaders plan to visit vladimir putin in st petersburg on sunday. the leader of the group, south african president cyril ramaphosa, said the delegation could offer the two leaders an african perspective on peace. according to a report seen by reuters, the delegation�*s

proposals include a russian troop pull—back, the lifting of sanctions against russia and for the international criminal court to withdraw its arrest warrant against president putin. the bbc�*s west africa correspondent, mayenijones, sent this report from kyiv. during the press conference that followed his meeting with african leaders today in kyiv, mr zelensky thanked them for their initiative but he added that a negotiated solution was not on the cards at the moment. in orderfor that to happen, mr zelensky said, russia would have to let go of the territories that it had taken from ukraine. translation: you can't - with good words or kind steps towards the russian president stop his aggression. i think there should be diplomatic isolation to show that the whole world understands that he is an aggressor and a terrorist and the people around him are war criminals like him. i think this would be serious leverage which can influence his people.

president cyril ramaphosa, who led the delegation, said he would not be drawn into choosing sides. he says that his country's position is neutral, but that he would be taking mr zelensky�*s comments to vladimir putin when he visits him in st petersburg on saturday. it is precisely this type of event that we saw today, or witnessed or even experienced, that makes us call for de—escalation. and there are offensives on both sides and we are saying those must be de—escalated as both countries proceed on the road to peace. the leaders of these seven african countries say the reason they've come to ukraine here today is because their economies have been disproportionately affected by the war in ukraine. a number of african countries import grain from ukraine and fertiliser from russia. the war has made a supply of both of these commodities

rarer and has driven prices of food up right across the continent. ajury in the us has found a truck driver guilty of killing 11 worshippers at a synagogue in pittsburgh. he was convicted of all 63 criminal charges he faced. the mass shooting at the tree of life synagogue in 2018 was the deadliest attack onjews in us history. earlier, i spoke to 0ren segal, vice president of the anti—defamation league. thank you so much forjoining us. the gunman was found guilty in all 63 counts in this case. what's your reaction to the verdict? accountability is important, and there is no happy ending after mass tragedy like this. this was the deadliest shooting gets a jewish community in american history. and so we know life will not be brought back, wounds will take time to heal, but at the end of the day, knowing there is some accountability does send an important message. the way that the pittsburgh

community continues to rally around thejewish community i think is something that will be remembered and notjust the violence and they hate that led us to this deadly day five years ago. this trial now moving to the penalty phase, do you think that the death penalty should be handed down? it's really not something for any one organisation or any one person to sort of have, an assessment on what should happen. it's really about the people in pittsburgh, the survivors, the family members. i think there are a lot of different opinions there, actually, and i don't think there's a right or wrong answer. everybody has their own views on whatjustice may look like. i think at the end of the day, some people will be happy with whatever the sentencing is, but not everybody

is going to be happy in a case like this that has impacted so many people. now, the killer used social media to attackjews online before going on this real—world rampage. is the federal government, in your opinion, doing enough to really monitor and crack down on this kind of online hate? the sad fact is, ever since pittsburgh, we have seen mass attacks against communities that were motivated by the same type of hatred that this shooter espoused online prior to carrying out his attack. we saw in el paso, more recently in the united states, we saw it in buffalo. but these white supremacists ideas are actually global and have led to violence in many places. so it's notjust a federal government issue about policing what we're seeing on social media's basis, but it's the social media companies themselves. they can decide what people can and can't

say on their platforms, and frankly, they're just not doing enough. some of what we know led this shooter to carry out this attack in pittsburgh is still easily available on multiple different social media platforms. the large onesand the fringe ones. last month, the bided administration issued a new strategy to counter anti—semitism. what are the top priorities to bring down the number of anti—jewish incidents we've been seeing across the us? fine point on that. five years after this horrible shooting in pittsburgh, we are seeing historically high numbers of anti—semitic incidents reported to us. we had over 3,700 in 2022, which was the highest number ever recorded to adl in over a0 years of doing this. in the last ten years, we have seen 500% increase in anti—semitic incidents in the united states. that includes harassment,

vandalism and assault. and so the white house strategy to combat anti—semitism was really the first of its kind, where we need the whole of society approach, backed by government, to attack anti—semitism in different ways. whether its social media companies doing more in order to protect their users and help people exploit those platforms to violence in the real world, whether it's reaching out between communities. the there's no—one silver bullet, but what the government has said is basically lay down the gauntlet to figure out how to model ways to combat it. how safe do you thinkjewish communities feel in 2023 in the united states? so thejewish community feels vulnerable. this is data that we get from surveys that we conduct. the fact that, as i mentioned, anti—semitic incidents are on the rise, hate in general in this country against various other communities is often combined,

frankly, with anti—semitism. and so, the community, in many places, feels vulnerable, but i will say the community does not feel hopeless. there are allies and partners that stand up with people when they are targeted. the white house strategy, again, is a significant message sent to everybody in this country that anti—semitism has no place here. law enforcement thwarting attacks regularly throughout the year... there are reasons to be hopeful, but the fact is the numbers speak to the vulnerability that the jewish community feels. 0ren segal, vice president of the anti—defamation league, thanks so much forjoining us. thank you. this week, an autospy report is providing more information about the death of 32—year—old us olympic star tori bowie. bowie was eight months�* pregnant when she went into labour and died subsequently at her florida home. her death was confirmed

by authorities in early may and has brought attention to the issue of black maternal mortality. bowie�*s cause of death was listed as respiratory distress and eclampsia, a rare and severe pregnancy—related condition which can cause seizures or coma and is more prevalent in black women. kat stafford is a national investigative race reporter at the ap, and laid out what's at stake. one of the things i think is most important to note about the maternal mortality crisis is this really impacts all black women across the board, and what i mean by that is regardless of your wealth, regardless of your social standing, it doesn't matter, if you are black, if you are a black woman in america, you are far more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth or postpartum, and a lot of the experts say it is very important to note that this cannot be explained just by genetics alone. what we have seen is the role of structural racism which frankly is still

deeply embedded in america, and that has shown up through the discrimination that black women report and encounter when they enter hospital systems. i spoke with the first lady of newjersey about her efforts to dismantle maternal mortality disparaities. thank you so much forjoining us on bbc news to talk about a topic which you are very focused on, and the recent tragic news of the death of sprinter tori bowie while eight months�* pregnant has really brought attention to the alarming state of maternal mortality in the united states right now, particularly among black women — american now being the most dangerous place to be pregnant or to give birth in high—income countries. why aren't doctors more focused on this? well, first of all, thank you for your interest in this and i think that with tori, it's enough is enough. we've seen this,

and she is one of four who were competing and won the gold in the 2016 olympics in the 4x100 metres, and three of those four have had life—threatening maternal problems, if not death now. so we have to focus on this. why are doctors not focused on it? this is a systemic problem across the country, and it comes down, i hate to say it, but systemic racism. there are instances where women are either too nervous, too scared to complain or to raise their voices on the one hand, because they don't want to come across as being difficult. 0n the other hand, they are not taken seriously, and they are sometimes dismissed. and when you have people like serena williams or beyonce who have also nearly died delivering babies, who have incredible platforms, we have to accept the fact that something is really wrong and it needs to be addressed. as you just mentioned there,

we have a situation in this country when black women are 2.6 times more likely to die in childbirth, during pregnancy or thereafter, than white women — the disparity is incredibly stark. what needs to be done to tackle this, to address this? so there has to be transformational change. and when i say that, it is everything from workforce development to access to care, to transportation, to education — it is literally going to touch on every aspect of life. and i would say that in this instance there are many things we can do. some cost a lot of money and some are absolutely common sense. we in newjersey started something called nurture nj back in 2019, and that was to raise awareness and also correct the scourge that we currently have in newjersey. you just talked about 2.6

in terms of differential — in newjersey, according to data from 2016 to 2018, black women were nearly seven times more likely than white women to die and black babies were three times more likely than white babies to die before their first birthday. when my husband came into office, we were 45th in the country in terms of maternal mortality rates, we then slipped to 47th. as of yesterday, it has been said that we are now 29th. so we are definitely moving the needle. there are policy changes that one can make. we have a nurture nj plan that we unveiled in 2021 that has 70 different action steps, of which we've already tackled over half of them, and it is obviously showing that we are moving the needle here. and i would say, i could highlight three that are really important and we know that they have really made an impact.

one is we are the third state to provide medicaid reimbursement for doula care, but we are the only state to both reimburse and grow our community doula workforce, and this provides culturally competent care and it has been proven to move the needle in this space. secondly, we expanded medicaid coverage to 365 days postpartum, but we also have increased our medicaid rates for reimbursing our entire perinatal workforce to 100% of medicare rates. this means that not only do mothers, all mothers have equity in terms of their healthcare, it means more providers will take medicaid coverage, and that means less waiting times for the patients. one thing i do want to ask about as well, alongside those measures, is the fact that the us is a country where there is no enshrined in law mandatory paid maternity leave.

and ijust wonder whether you think that that is also damaging to women's health? yes, i guess the short answer is yes. and the reason i would say that is that most of the deaths happen after delivery. most people think this happens at delivery, it's not — it's after delivery. and so when women go home, you don't know what they are going home to, and you don't know if they are going to go right back to work, if they will follow up on their appointments. babies are seen multiple times in the first six weeks of birth, and mothers are not seen until six weeks after birth. and we are addressing that in newjersey as well, with the most robust universal nurse home visitation programme. so, yes is the answer. and so, first lady, you have outlined some of the steps that newjersey has been taking to tackle this. what more does the administration need to do, though? just so you know, i have been working on this for six years in newjersey. we have made tremendous strides over the past six years and we're having all sorts of benchmarks. i already talked about

america's health rankings where we are now 29th. march of dimes also recently came out with a report that showed the improvement across the country in terms of reducing preterm births. they looked at 53 states and territories and of those 53, 47 declined, one remained the same and four improved, and newjersey is one of those four. so we definitely have a secret sauce and we will continue working on this. the first lady of newjersey, tammy snyder murphy there, also an advocate for women's health, thank you forjoining us here on bbc news. thank you, helena. the us military analyst whose change of heart on the vietnam war led him to leak the classified pentagon papers has died at the age of 92. daniel ellsberg, who had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in february, died at his home in kensington in california. the pentagon papers revealed us government deception about the vietnam war and set off a major freedom—of—the—press battle. ellsberg became an advocate for whistleblowers and his leak was portrayed in the 2017 movie the post. he spoke with our

stephen sackur last year on bbc�*s hardtalk program. what i'm saying is if you can't tolerate government lying, you can't be in any government at a high foreign policy staff position for a week. and i'd been doing it almost ten years. and i thought, this is 7,000 pages of top secret documents. i'll go to prison for life. and in fact, i was charged with a possible 115 years, which would have been a life sentence. made it very clear. this was a loser. this was not the place to plant the imperialflag. i didn't use the word imperial in those days. and the answer was, i really was dangerous to the policy he and nixon were carrying out in secret. they were secretly threatening nuclear war to north vietnam. and nixon had reason to believe, it wasn't paranoid, that i had access to that. that's all from us here in washington. we leave you with these live pictures of london as we hand off to our colleageus there.

buy from all of us. —— bye. hello there. it's looking pretty different weather—wise this weekend — we're not going to have wall—to—wall sunshine like we've had the previous weekend. we have low pressure working its way in. that's going to bring showers and some thundery downpours for many places. and there will be some sunshine around, but you'll notice it's going to feel increasingly humid. 0ur air source still coming in from the south, so it's going to be fairly warm. but here it is, this area of low pressure continuing to edge in towards western areas. that's where we'll see most of the showers, even longer spells of rain across northern ireland for saturday morning. the best of the sunshine towards eastern areas. could see a little bit of cloud here and there, and there could be the odd shower popping up into central areas into the afternoon. some low cloud, mist and murk affecting northeast scotland and the northern isles, so temperatures here only around 13 or 1a degrees,

but for most, it's the low to mid 20s. so, not quite as warm as of late, but still well above the seasonal norm. now, as we head through saturday night, we continue with showers through central and western areas, again, some of them will be heavy and thundery, tending to stay dry the further east that you are. and it's going to be slightly milder, i think, saturday night — a warmer, muggierfeel to things out west. now, into sunday, this is the day where i think we could see most of the showers and thunderstorms. they will become widespread across england and wales during the day and there could be some torrential downpours in places. now, there will be more cloud around too, so it's not going to be quite as warm than of late, we're generally looking at the high teens, low 20s for many of us, and still some low cloud, mist and murk for northeast scotland, the northern isles. through sunday night, it looks like we could see an area of thundery rain spreading northwards across england and wales, pushing across scotland into monday, so a very wet start for monday morning across scotland. that heavy rain becomes confined to the north highlands into the northern isles,

but elsewhere, it brightens up, sunshine and showers — again, some of the showers could be heavy and thundery in places. but with more sunshine around, it'll be a little bit warmer, i think, with temperatures again reaching the mid 20s in the warmest spots. and then, as we move beyond monday, low pressure always nearby to the north and the west of the uk. however, towards the end of the new week, it could be that high pressure wants to build back in again, so that should kill off the showers across southern areas, and we could see temperatures rising again across southern britain with the increasing amounts of sunshine. but most of the showers will tend to be across the north and the west of the country. see you later.

voice-over: this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hour, straight after this programme. north korea. for over 70 years, the country has been ruled by one family.