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tv   Newsline  LINKTV  February 23, 2023 5:00am-5:31am PST

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♪ hello and welcome to this ition of nhk "newsline." i'm raja pradhan with the news from tokyo. russian president vladimir putin has declared he intends to boost his country's nuclear forces just a day before the one-year anniversary of its invasion of ukraine. putin said a modern and efficient army and navy are a guarantee of russia's security and sovereignty. >> translator: our troops are heroically fighting the neo-naziism that has taken root in ukraine, protecting our people in our historical lands, and are fighting courageouy
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and heroically. >> putin made the comments on the defender of the fatherland blic holiday he went on to say that a new intercontinental ballistic missile system will be put on combat duty. putin added that russia will continue full production of air-launched hypersonic systems and begin mass deployment of a sea-launched hypersonic missile. meanwhile, ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy praised graduates of his country's military academies. he's happy to see there are people who want to make the story of ukrainian victory their own life story. now, the u.s. general assembly has begun abadebate on draft resolution to demand the immediate withdrawal of russian troops. >> the one-year mark of russia's invasion of ukraine stands as a grim milestone for the people of ukraine and for the international community. that invasion is an affront to
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our collective conscience. it is a violation of the united nations charter and international law. >> guterres described the invasion as having dramatic humanitarian and human rights consequences and cautioned against an escalation. >> we are hearing implicit threats to use nuclear weapons. the so-called tactical use of nuclear weapons is utterly unacceptable. >> the draft jointly proposed by european nations, the united states, japan, and other countries states no territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal. the document also calls on russian forces to withdraw from ukraine immediately and unconditionally, as well as to halt attacks on infrastructure and civilian facilities, including schools and hospitals. japanese foreign minister yoshimasa has arrived in new
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york to attend the general assembly, where he is expected to call for support for the draft. a vote is expected on thursday. a senior u.s. government official has expressed concern other china's possible support for the russian military. >> we are deeply concerned that china is considering providing lethal support to russia in its aggression against ukrai. >> kritenbrink says the u.s. has ld china if the country ovides russia with lethal arms and helps it evade sanctions, it will adversely affect u.s./china his statement came as china's top diplomat wang yi met with putin and his foreign minister, sergey lavrov, in moscow. kritenbrink also strongly criticized china for its moves in the international arena. they want to play a role in ending the war. the u.s. official said while china behaves in public as a supporter of peace, it has been
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supporting what he described as russia's brutal military invasion and is gradually getting close to offering military assistance to russia. britain's armed force minister says russia and ukraine have mounted spring offenses to try to break the deadlock. james heapy spoke to nhk tuesday, describing russia's attack as pretty ineffective. >> in man places, they're being resisted all together. more importantly, they're not really over places for of much strategic importance to ukraine. >> haeappey said momentum is building for support of ukraine, pointing to the recent commitments at the munich security conference. he said the international community should focus on getting ukraine successfully onto the offensive within the next month or two. >> when ukraine starts its offensive, and that will come when ukraine is ready, when it's got the kit and it has completed
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the training, that could be a very decisive moment in this war. that's the next phase. that's what everybody is working towards. >> regarding the ukrainian president's pleas for combat jets, heappey merely said sunak has not ruled out supplying them. military commanders from russia and china are deepening their engagement with south africa. they're taking part in joint drills in the indian ocean. russian defense officials say the exercises will last ten days. they're sending a warship dep deployed just last month. it's armed with a missile called the zircon that can carry nuclear warheads and travel at nine times the speed of sound. chinese commanders have sent three warships to take part. they include a destroyer, a frigate, and a support vessel. leaders in south africa have maintained a neutral stance on
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the war in ukraine, but opposition lawmakers have been critical. they say the drills send a message of support for the invasion. u.s. defense officials have released a photo of what they say is the chinese surveillance balloon that floated across the united states earlier this month. the pentagon says a reason sense aircraft took the photo on february 3rd from above. a u.s. fighter jet downed the object the following day. the photo shows what appear to be solar panels under the white balloon. u.s. officials claim the object was part of a chinese surveillance program. search teams recovered the wreckage off the u.s. east coast. officials have been trying to determine the capabilities of its payload. moving now to the latest on wednesday's collapse of a coal mine in china. rescue workers are digging through rubble, trying to locate nearly 50 people missing. at least five people have died
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and six are injured. the incident occurred at this open pit mine in the inner mongolia autonomous region. local media reports say an initial collapse was followed by a landslide five hours later. around 900 rescue workers were at the scene on thursday. the mine has reportedly been busy recently. the media quoted a worker as saying operations continued over the lunar new year holiday period late last month. authorities in turkey are sifting through the debris from the massive earthquakes that struck on february 6th. they say shoddy construction work is responsible for compounding the disaster. now a group of lawyers is gaering evidence to find out who is responsible.
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an initial magnitude 7.8 quake was followed by more tremors. more than 42,000 deaths have been confirmed in turkey and over 5,900 in syria. on wednesday, volunteer lawyers visited one collapsed building after another in antakya, the main city of hatay province and one of turkey's worst affected municipalities. they took photos and videos of steel reinforcement rods to check their thickness and learn why they couldn't withstand the tremors. the lawyers asked residents to assist them, and about 50,000 people obliged. they say the evidence will be used when cases go to court. >> if the field would choose right, if the buildings built right, these pple didn't die. our responsibility is to find
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who did, who is responsible for killing people. >> she said the work is being carried out for the sake of children, so nobody will lose their life so needlessly in the future. next, miyagi was one of jap japan's worst hit prefectures in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. questions remain over how to better guide people to safety when the next disaster strikes. our next report looks at a pilot project that's taking an early warning system to the skies. >> reporter: a large balloon with within advertising banner floats high in the sky. this is a test flight to tell people that the building above which it is flying is an emergency evacuation site in the case of a tsunami. a local graduate student specializing in tsunami research based on engineering is behind
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this, narita shunnosuke. >> translator: although this is a primitive method, the balloon is a useful tool in terms of catching people's attention and communicating information. >> reporter: the prefectural study last year said a tsunami larger than the 2011 disaster was likely to hit miyagi in the future. it warned that the tsunami more than 1 meter high could reach the coast in as little as 21 minutes after an earthquake. after the 2011 disaster, over 120 buildings and towers along miyagi's coast were designated as evacuation sites. however, officials are aware that challenges remain. for example, this hotel is an evacuation site, but there are concerns over how to inform tourists. >> translator: it's difficult to know where evacuation buildings are. we can notify locals through maps and disaster prevention
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lectures, but it's harder for tourists who are just visiting. >> reporter: narita hopes to solve this problem. >> translator: you can see where the building is located at a glance. >> reporter: narita designed this system. when a device installed on a roof receives a tsunami warning, it releases a balloon with evacuation information written on an attached banner. the idea is for the balloon to be released automatically, but in a recent experiment, he started by manually releasing a balloon to test the concept. after its release, he conducted a survey among people in the area. >> reporter: the experiment was useful in highlighting its limitations. >> translator: i went to places where people could read the
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banner on the balloon with red dots. >> reporter: blue dots indicate where people as far from 1 kilometer could see the balloon but were unable to read the banner. narita also learned that releasing the balloon manually was time consuming, confirming the noeed for an automatic launh season. he will now continue his research based on these findings. >> translator: another devastating natural disaster is likely to occur at any moment. we must explore ways to use our knowledge of earlier experiences to prevent another disaster. not just here but across japan and around the world. >> reporter: with nearly 12 years passing since the 2011 disaster, younger generations may well change the way we prepare for future tsunamis.
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♪ now, here's a three-day outlook on the weather for selected cities around the globe. ♪
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♪ snsds . and that wraps up this edition of nhk "newsline." i'm raja pradhan in tokyo. there's much more to come on nhk world japan, so please do stay
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with us. welcome to "newsline in dept depth". we interview one of the most influence shl chinese artists working today, he received an award in the field of sculpture. although his work transcends that category alone. this series of photographs documents ai dropping and smashing a 2,000-year-old urn, an act raising questions about
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the value of historic artifacts. for this work, he carpeted the floor of a museum with 100 million handcrafted sunflower seeds. all look the same, but each is individual, much like the population of china. ai won world recognition as one of the designers of the beijing olympic stadium, nicknamed the bird's nest. whatever the genre, ai's works have always challenged viewers, as well as the political and social status quo. he's also an outspoken defender of human rights, which has set him at odds with the chinese government. now based in europe, he continues to create works that confront the contradictions of modern society. i spoke with ai about his views on the rising tide of authoritarianism and threats to democracy. we began by talking about the
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situation in his hometown, china. the image of the former chinese president being led out of a session on the last day of the communist party congress has provoked strong speculation. what kind of politics does the party congress expose, you think? >> the communist party today is never different from a communist party from 70, 80 years ago. even longer. communist party has 100 years of struggle. it is always quite brutal and always internal affair. >> there are reasons for ai's pessimism. his family was forced to persevere exkreesh uacruciatings under mao and was in the
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unforgiving quest for 20 years. his father, a renowned poet w signedo caning the >> since i w born myather s exiled. so growi up, i growi up in the uighur province, and he was always being criticized, discriminated. i don't even know what his homeland, because you are only deeply hurt by your homeland. >> harsh environment during the revolution. how did that experience form or de-form your childhood? >> i think about my rebelling. i become questioning or criticizing authority.
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i come to relate my emotions to the people who are weak and pow powerless or voiceless. >> in may 2008, he did just that. rebelled, questioned and critici criticized, making him the most dangerous person in china. a massive earthquake had devastated the area, claiming 87,000 lives. among them, over 5,000 children who died in collapsed schools. initially, the government did not disclose such details. eventually, grieving parents and locals began to call out politicians on the structures that have not been built to code due to government mismanagement and corruption. schools built by the state were supposed to be secure, so ai began a campaign of questioning
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how and why so many children died. and he sought transparency over the facts. ai demanded that a list of the names of the children be made public, but in vain. soon, he took matters into his own hands to honor the young victims. >> if the state cannot answer me those questions, i will do a self-investigation. i organized a team online of young people, and they joined me to do the investigation, go to those very remote area, knock on the doors and talk to the parents or the relatives of those children. finally, we get over 5,219 students' names, birthday and which school collapsed. that act really scared the authority because no individual
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ever in china's history did something like that. >> the resulting work, ai had covered the facade in germany with students' backpacks, spelling out the words of one victim's mother. this was art and activism in one. >> it was a show of the student's backpack as the remembering. so i list one child who lost his life, 7 years old. his mom write to me, said, i'm so thankful you are doing this. but i just want the world to remember my daughter, the name of this young lady, 7 years old. said, i want the world to remember, happily lived in the world for 7 years.
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so that sentence touches me. i have a chance to show my work in munich, in germany. i put that words on the backpacks. >> for sichuan earthquake was another time for his art and akctivism. he called for a social change. the slogan remains, respect life, never forget. this work simply called "straight," uses 90 tons of steel reinforcement rods recovered from the collapsed school buildings. straightened and arranged to evoke the fault lines to triggered the earthquake. although works like this have been received with enthusiasm around the world, ai believes his art has had little impact on
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politics and society. do you think that had a transformative impact to the people and the society? >> i don't think so. i think, in general, the world is indifferent. but, for me, it's very important. by doing that, i found out who i am, what i care about, and what kind of action i can take. >> when the public is tamed, it would be very convenient for the authority. >> yes, absolutely. when you have a strong censorship or ideology control, there's no -- not much creativity there because creativity is the most dangerous
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education presentation for authoritarian. no dangers, no artists. >> his activism led the chinese government to intensify its surveillance. 2011, he have detained and remained under house arrest even after he was released. in 2015, he moved to germany after his passport was finally returned to him. since going into exile, ai has focused on the refugee crisis. he has visited more than 40 refugee camps, producing artworks as well as documentary films based on that experience. what makes you want to put together a film and convey your message to the world? >> actually, i feel i'm very close to them, especially psychologically.
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i want to more deeply understand who they are. another purpose is to record what i have seen and leave it for history. even with such big crisis, there's not so much study about crisis. today, we are facing quite an extreme situation globally, facing some uncertainty because of this very fast development the past half century. and i think that is even more relevant for individuals to be conscious and to be involved. because they are all responsible for how the world become like the world today. >> ai worries that people around the world no longer think for
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themselves. there is fear that the freedom to think with also erode when the freedom of expression is compromised. what will this mean for democracy? >> i think human beings should trust their own emotions and judgment. but, very often, those emotions and the judgment already are being polluted by education, by mainstream agendas. they don't have so-called freedom to be themselves. they are product of the education. that is not about freedom. that is about authoritarianism. in democratic society, there's also authoritarianism by corporative culture. >> can an artist change the world? um, i think i will not say
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it'll change the world, but it certainly changes me. also, i think i'm just one of the ordinary people. if it changes me, it can change many other people. >> you never felt that perhaps this is the time that you should give up? >> to give up a fight, for me, it means to give up life. i may do that one day, but not now. >> i was struck by ai's statement, that humans are indifferent and art itself has little power to change the world. for him, changing the world is not an abstract concept. it's about whether or not you, yourself,an change. in that sense, ai weiwei personifies his art while posing the questions, what do you think, and what can you do? it's a message that resonates even more deeply in today's
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world. that's it for today's "newsline in depth." thank you for watching, and see you soon. t keeps you awake at
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nit? >> any reason that could affect any human. tom: gunfire between afghan and pakistani border forces. a major crossing for trade and trav betwe the countries has been closed. what's causing the latest flareup and how will it affect people on both sides of the border? this is inside story. welcom t

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