Reuters World News - The shadow of U.S.-China tensions shifts to the war

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

President Joe Biden lands in Kyiv and China’s top diplomat Wang Yi prepares to go to Moscow after a weekend of sniping between the two nations. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken touches down in Turkey. We're on the ground for all of it. And the BAFTA's. What does Britain's night of nights foretell for the Oscars? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

North Korea warns it could turn the Pacific into a firing range as tensions sore over U.S. military drills. Pyongyang has fired two more missiles off its east coast. It's just days after the country fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into the sea of Japan. That prompted the U.S. to carry out joint military exercises with South Korea and Japan. Japan's Prime Minister, Fumio Khashida,

told reporters he's requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council. But the prospect of any new round of sanctions against North Korea is slim. The UN Security Council is split of the war in Ukraine, and US and Chinese relations are rockier, after an attempt to dial down the tension fell flat in Munich. We'll go to Germany for more on that shortly, and we've got the latest from the ground in Turkey and Ukraine.

Plus me on the red carpet at Britain's biggest film award. It's Monday, February 20th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. I'm Kim Vinal in London. We start in Munich, where efforts to patch up a rift between the United States and China have failed. Tensions between Washington and Beijing deepened after Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and China's state counselor, Wang Yi, met on the sidelines of a global security conference in the German city. China's top diplomat said Washington was being hysterical over the shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon. And Blinken warned Wang of consequences if China provides military support to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Andrew Gray, Reuters' senior Europe's security and diplomatic

correspondent, watched it all unfold. So I'm just back from the Munich Security Conference. And I think two takeaways for me above all, the first one was a very strong Western message of unity and support when it comes to the war in Ukraine. And then the second takeaway, I think, would be US-China tensions. Very much on display, Wang Yi and Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, met on the sidelines of the conference. But the message from both sides was not particularly warm. Anthony Blinken has also accused China of at least considering sending lethal assistance to Russia. So those were the two really quite dark clouds, I think,

hanging over the conference, the war in Ukraine and those US-China tensions. That US-China relationship is likely to be a shadow hanging over the war today. President Joe Biden announcing he's in Kiev for a surprise visit, just as China's foreign minister announces he's going to Moscow. In Ukraine, President Vladimir Zelenskyy, says Russia has suffered extraordinarily significant losses near the town of Virheida.

Burjada sits in the eastern industrial region Donbass, the focus of fierce fighting between the two sides. Moscow is intensifying its missile attacks ahead of the first anniversary of the war on February 24th. Air raid sirens ringing out across Kiev today as people flee for cover. We'll have more on Biden's. trip in tomorrow's podcast. After the diplomatic Teter Tert in Munich, Anthony Blinken headed to Turkey.

He pledged an additional $100 million in humanitarian aid after touring one of the area's hardest hit by the earthquake. I just had a chance to fly over to see some of the devastation. And it's really hard to put him into words. Reuters Kloidark Kilkoyne travelled in the Blackhawk helicopter with Blinken and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlu Chavisholulu. She filed this report for us from Indyarlic Air Base. Hatai province is one of the worst affected areas by this earthquake.

We flew over and all along that region and we saw the devastation from the air. It's devastation on an industrial scale. Even the last few days when I was actually walking through it, through the city centre of Antacia, there is really nothing left. The city is reduced to rubble. You can see the devastation on every corner. When you're walking past buildings, you walk towards them and then you get a really, really strong smell of death.

And you know that the rescue workers haven't been working on this site because it's very clear that there's bodies underneath. On every street outside of every apartment block that's reduced to rubble, There's a family sitting there with a fire burning waiting for news of loved ones to find a body or to find a miracle. It's one of the saddest, saddest things I have ever seen in my life. I'm Clodagh-Kilkoin in Jarlik Air Basin, Adana. It's been incredible and humbling to see people pulled from the rubble in Turkey and Syria. More than 46,000 people have been killed and the death toll continues to climb.

I spoke to surgery advisor, Mohana Amir Taraja, of Medicine Sans Frontier, about how the danger isn't necessarily over once someone is rescued from the rubble. I mean, when we think about mortality and earthquakes, there's a certain segment of people that will die right away. So these are the people that have really traumatic, irreversible injuries of both of the head and neck, let's say. Then your next peak is people who will die if you don't get to them within the first 24 hours, let's say. So people have internal bleeding or chest injuries or these sorts of things. But I think the other thing is that a lot of the morbidity, the mortalities, also comes later

because it comes from sepsis and organ failure. So it's not even in the first 24 hours of when you pull somebody out of the rubble. It's really, it can come in days and weeks. The money could never replace what I've got. Tikaraka resident Tahurangiruru is distraught as she walks into her home covered in mud and silt after Cyclone Gabriel. Cash donations, Koha and Māori, won't bring back what she's lost. New Zealand's biggest natural disaster this century has killed at least 11 people, and over 2,000 people are still unaccounted for as poor communication hamper's rescue efforts.

New Zealand estimates the financial cost of the cyclone will. will be more than $8 billion. So fourth quarter earning seasons nearly over, and it has been tepid so far. What we get in the days ahead is some of the heavy hitter retailers. We've got Walmart, the world's largest retailer by sales and Home Depot. They're both reporting results on Tuesday. And then on Wednesday, we've got the discount store operator, TJX companies. So why do we care?

Because the US consumer is very important to the US economy. and what these earnings results are going to tell us is how they are holding up under the massive tightening that we've seen so far from the US Federal Reserve. Speaking of the US Federal Reserve, on Wednesday we get the minutes from their last meeting. We know that the Fed has started to ease the pace at which it's raising borrowing costs, but what markets are looking for now is just how long are they going to continue going. I'm Dara Ranising, editor, Financial Market, Europe in London. I'm here on the red carpet just waiting for the stars to arrive.

The Bafters are a strong indication of what will happen at the Oscars, so there's a lot of crossover with the frontrunners at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards, most notably all quiet on the Western Front with 14 nominations including Best Film, which is the first German adaptation of a novel. A lot of us would have read at school. the 1928 novel of the same name. Here's Sarah Mills, who is Royt's senior producer for entertainment

on the red carpet with me. Sarah, hi. Hello. So how does this BAFTAs compare to the Oscars in terms of what makes it different? How is this BAFTA is different to what we're going to see at the Oscars? Good question. Perhaps the main difference is that we seem to have more black actors nominated for BAFTA than we do this year the Oscars. I'm thinking of the movie Till, which stars Danielle Deadweiler.

She is up for a BAFTA here, but that movie hasn't made the list over in the States for the Oscars. And I'm also thinking about Viola Davis nominated here, but also missing from the list when it comes to Academy Awards. So I think that's probably the key difference here. A lot of talk about Michelle Yeo, who has been nominated for Best Actress for her lead role in everything, everywhere all at once. So we asked her on the red carpet about diversity. Well, it's all normalized, where it's not a surprise or a shock that you have Asians being nominated in any of the cabins, especially in the acting cabinets. Then I feel that we have made a giant repress. Michelle did not take out the award for Best Actress, which went to Kate Blanchett for her role in the music drama Tar.

Best Actor went to Austin Butler for the biopic Elvis, and the coveted Best Film Award went to the favorite Netflix drama, All Quiet on the Western Front. Here's hoping they send me to the Oscars next. That's it for this edition of Reuters World News. We'll be back on Tuesday. In the meantime, you can find more trusted news at Reuters.com.