of truth starts february 18th on d, w. ah ah, [000:00:00;00] ah, the thursday w news lie from berlin after tracking it for days drifting high over the us fighter jets shoot down a suspected chinese fiber loot, beijing warns there may be repercussions or for the program. iran state media says the country supreme leader has pardoned tens of thousands of people who are arrested in anti government protest. but rights groups are remaining skeptical and

are pakistan's, former president and military ruler prevail, massaro has died after a long illness. he tried to bring in liberal values to a conservative country and survived the several assassination attempts. ah, i'm here the bahamas, welcome to the program. china has condemned the u. s. military decision to shoot down a suspected chinese surveillance blue that flew over the u. s. united states shut it down on saturday. crating, a diplomatic and political storm. china has warned the us of repercussions. they maintain, it was merely a civilian where the balloon blown off course. after floating across the us for days, the suspected chinese spy balloon has been shot down off the coast of south carolina

. several airports was shots and as space closed, before the balloon was brought down by military fight jets, landing 11 kilometers of the us, mainland u. s. president joe biden said he ordered the balloon to be down as soon as it could be done so safely. on wednesday when i was break down, the blow or the brethren was sure to down on one day as soon as possible, i decided without doing damage to anyone on the ground. the successor took it down and i want to compliment our aviators who did it. and want more to report on a little later, china's ministry of foreign affairs, condemned the shooting down of the balloon. let it maintain, leslie was a civilian air ship, though die you don't? beijing previously said it regretted his entrees into us airspace. oh,

good afternoon, regarding your secretary of state wide, antony blinking, cancelled a trip to china. following is discovery. it's very, the balloon may be neutralized, but the fallout is fair. the soured already brought diplomatic relations between china and the united states. earlier i talked to in boyd, he is a professor of aerospace engineering sciences at the university of colorado, belda. and he told us how a surveillance blynn works and what it's capable of. yes. so i spy below, you know, it has to be useful attributes. so it is much closer to the ground than a spy satellite is. and so you know, the closer you are to something more clearly you can see it. and then secondly, and has what we call persistence. which means that, you know, because not flying very fast, and it stays over the same, you know, region of ground for quite

a long time. so that allows you plenty of time to gather information. and so, you know what's, what's unusual, i think what's surprising for a lot of people is that of course, balloons are really not very controllable. ready usually, right, you usually are being blown by the wind and that's where you're going to happen. some reports that this object may have had some propellers in it, and so that would perhaps give you a lot more control. and maybe that's what makes it useful. in this case, iran supreme court leader has reported the pardon, tens of thousands of people detained in the anti government protests. but human rights groups are skeptical of that to create i, to the only common a made the announcement on the anniversary of the $979.00, a stomach revolution. but the pardon excludes people with international tires, so anyone facing find charges? nearly 20000 people have been arrested in nationwide protests,

which was thought by the death of g them. i mean, while in custody in september. well, only if at all, and then john is an iran experts and also the author of the book, iran in an emerging new world order from didn't john to honey. he told me what he makes of the timing of personnel. it's meant, well, the timing is still, you know, at a time when there is a relative calm of st, protesting iran, but we see the combination of strikes. so the situation has not really a comp for good. and we have to take such announcement from the supreme leader, but also from the iranian judiciary, with lots of, you know, with lots of grains of salt because there is no indication whatsoever that among those who are going to be part and going to be political prisoners we know that there are a lot of political prisoners in iran, and we also know that in connection with a protest,

there are probably $20000.00 jails. and so what i see here and why would i could speculate about is something different. there are reports about reeducation of prisoners inside of iranian jails, and those are going to be freed, could be used to work for the regime basically as some kind of playing close. also, you know, being tasked with a future project. so i think though the whole background, the whole story is a different one. some may argue that this could possibly be seen as the 1st acknowledgement by the wedding authorities around the scale of the crackdown. would that make any difference? no, it, there is no such a thing and i think a combination to what i said before, you know, the regime has been able to put a hold of, you know,

relative to the regulatory process as a college. but there is a white lea, a combination of this process with renew street protests that you know, when the cold winter is over in iran. and also when the huge economic price is going to also translate into street protests. they're gonna quickly become political. and the iranian states could, you know, using a could also use, for instance, malicious in the middle east. i had to import them so to speak, in order to call the protest. but this path is also quite difficult, given also us pressure upon the iraqi government. i know our u. s. currencies are given to iran via iraq, and those militias would be pay. it would need to be paid in the u. s. daughters

and not the iranian currency. so, you know, hardening a lot of prisoners, maybe a whole different background to what we initially can think of to pakistan where the former president and military ruler perez michelle has died. he's the con daughter along illness in a hospital in dubai at age 79, which i have became president after a military coup in 1999. and he avoided 3 assassination attempts before leaving office in 2008. he later attend today political come back, but face criminal charges and has since been living in exile. i've done the same ally as a senior lecturer in international relations at kings college london. i asked him about the role in shaping pakistan's place in the region. he was, in some sense, is the key actor on the front lines of the global war on terror with the american invasion. and in fact, he ordered

a hundreds of thousands of pakistani troops into the tribal regions and was actually one of them in sort of his, his, his military force where he was, the chief of army staff was quite involved in sort of incorporating pakistan into the sort of the global war on terror, which included a massive a globe back in terms of a significant domestic insurgency in pakistan that lasted for about 10 years and is sort of stepping up again right now. so he's a very complicated figure because in some sense is he did transform domestic society and domestic politics that i'm sure we'll, we'll get that. but he was actually sort of, i think,

best known for sort of pakistan's complicated integration into the, into the war in afghanistan. and speaking of the feelings of domestically in pakistan, let's just take a listen of what people in front of us have to say what don't get sick. there was good in him, but his one act for which he will be remembered throughout history was that he broke the long do i let the rule of law is the most important thing for any country family. and it is the responsibility of all citizens to uphold it. hotter was more like a headache of ha, envoy, sheriff, was a good ruler, his tenure was good, will the prices were low and debt provided relief to people. education. shara hosted education and infrastructure. he brought development to the country and at the time g, d, p growth was good legans. but on the other hand, the country suffered losses in the face of terrorism. your entering america's war, weakened our own country, mixed feelings there. some say that he posted the economy. some would argue that he did

a lot for women's rights. but do you think that most pakistan is remember him fondly or has his legacy salad, the image of this all powerful military in pakistan? it's complicated. one of the things that my shark actually did was sort of come bring together and hire a group of a key sort of political opinion in pakistan, among especially urbanites in urban, the urban middle class oriented against corruption and towards development. and of course, a lot of those voters have been supporting him on hand. so this is a very powerful sort of force in puck, same politics that was muted before my sheriff came on the scene. at the same time, there was a lot of controversy over his rule and in fact, he was pushed out of power in 2007 by

a massive coalition of democratic parties and civil society or organizations after he acted against the independence of the, of the judiciary, so in part i think the mature, even though he was an a on democratic actor, has actually forced pakistan pakistan's relationship to the military in a completely new phase in which i think it's more likely than not that the military will net, will not get involved in a straightforward matter, but rather try to influence their own interests in their own policies behind the scenes and none, nothing like that king's college london. thank you very much indeed for your time. absolutely. thank you very much. i wasn't miss all strike on ukraine, 2nd largest city. hi keith. has that the case?

5 people wound it and damage buildings in the city center khaki. this close to the russian border and local authority say it's been the target of frequent massage attacks. emergency workers were on the scene after 2 russian missiles slammed into the northeastern city of har. keith, reportedly hitting to civilian structures not far from the central plaza. several floors of the university were destroyed and a nearby apartment building was left uninhabitable. one resident said she and her partner only survived thanks to lucky timing on yet with which we happened to have just gone into the bath friend and right after that had happened. my husband with covered and broken glass. but everybody is alive. that's the main thing. good moscow's forces have seemingly given up trying to capture ukraine's 2nd largest city, but they continue to bombard it, frequently hitting civilian targets. but

a couple 100 kilometers to the south. the warren, the ground, is still raging with buck moot at its epicenter. for months ukrainian soldiers had been fighting off an onslaught by russian forces, intent on resting control of the region. their line held through the depths of winter and into the new year. but now keeps as its fighters are slowly being pushed back toward bach mote. while they battle in the trenches to have toll ukraine's leaders are waging their own fight automotives for more support from nato allies, the said bull green, they say the only way to push the russian offensive back is with more powerful weapons. after initial hesitation, pledges of tanks and long range rockets began to roll in from western allies with deliveries expected to begin arriving in the spring for ukrainian soldiers. that might seem a long time to wait. especially with many analysts predicting that russia will intensify its assault as winter weather gives way to spring. a recap of our top

story. china has condemned the u. s. military decision to shoot down. i suspect the chinese surveillance balloon flew over the u. s. the united states shocked down the balloon on saturday. crating, a diplomatic and political storm efforts are now under way to collect the day free at set you up to date up next is doc for looking at the civil war in libya, i'll see, said leonardo da vinci's, mysterious masterpiece. so that is perhaps the greatest leonardo masterpiece in the collection of the louvre. it is the virgin of the rocks. was there another symbolic meaning to this beautiful painting that perhaps we just don't understand