¶ Intro / Opening
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¶ Venezuela Earthquake: Immediate Impact
Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. Coming to you live from London, I'm James Kamaro Salmi. The sound of chaos and confusion in Caracas. That was the moment a building collapsed in the small town of El Junquito on the outskirts of the Venezuelan capital as two earthquakes struck within forty seconds of each other twenty-two hours ago.
The footage shows bystanders running for cover and at least four people shielding each other as they are engulfed by dust from the collapsing three story building. And that is what it sounded like inside BBC reporter Vanessa Silver's apartment just after 6 p.m. local time, as the South American country suffered a double punch from beneath, a pair of quakes, known as a doublet.
The second had a 7.5 magnitude, making it the strongest to hit Venezuela not just in this century, but in the last one as well. The latest confirmed number of deaths stands at 188, but thousands more are still unaccounted for. including this woman's child.
Un desespero, mi amor, que no puedo decir un desayuno.
I'm desperate. I just want to know where my son is.
Oh.
Whether he's trapped or at a shelter. But look at what time it is they still haven't arrived. Look, only we the neighbours who managed to get out are the ones helping.
As that frantic search for survivors continues, uh the president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Jorge Rodriguez, has given a televised address in it. He said Two hundred and fifty buildings had been damaged or lost, primarily in La Guera, it's a coastal city north of Caracas. He also advised the public how they could help.
Esta es la hora de salvar vida. ¿Y cómo pueden colaborar todas y todas?
This is the time to save lives. And the way you can all help is by supporting the collection centres that will be set up at schools, universities, the various NGOs dedicated to this type of work, the International Red Cross, the different churches, and by providing what is requested. Above all, this includes water, medicines, mattresses and blankets.
Well let's hear from some people who have been caught up in this. Kelvin Padilla lives with his partner and dog in the port city of La Guerra, which as I mentioned is was the the worst hit area, and he told News House Tim Franks how he had reacted when his building shook violently for twenty to thirty seconds.
Yesterday at six oh five p.m. I was on my phone in the living room in my house. Everything started shaking a little bit soft. So I was thinking, well, maybe it's nothing really big. And I stay calm. But then in the next seconds, everything started really hard for about twenty to thirty seconds, something like that. and I got really nervous. I tried to hide under my sofa. I couldn't. I was looking for my dog in the moment in the chaos. I got my dog and I saw Half of my house falling off.
Like that, literally.
Good grief. I mean you m you must have been terrified.
Yes, it was a complete disaster. I wasn't prepared. I wasn't thinking anything like that could happen ever in my home and in Venezuela en general.
And just in terms of the picture around you, Kelvin, I mean you said that half your house fell down. How badly has La Guayra been damaged from what you've been able to see?
I saw like ten different buildings that uh don't exist anymore. they were like complete crash with people inside you know
Okay, and that's I mean that's the key part of this, isn't it? That uh y these were residential buildings you're saying, where people were likely to have been trapped.
Yes. There are people alive trapped in those houses.
What sort of efforts are there to get people out? I mean, have you seen a big response from the emergency services?
I mean in my song it's a little bit uh difficult. I think one in the rest, everybody is looking for for medicines. and for the relative because uh some people don't know anything about the relative at this moment.
So there's there's not a lot of information. I I assume also it's it's quite difficult, I mean, presumably we're speaking to you, but I guess often what happens in the aftermath of something like an earthquake is that it can be a A lot more difficult to get through to people, phone lines are down, that sort of thing. Are you uh is that what you're finding as well, that other things have stopped working?
yes combined to the natural disaster we were having and I'm having right now the problem with the electricity the problem with the internet fire right now Uh we don't have anything like that. Anything. I'm charging my phone right now in my car.
And and where are you staying right now? I mean I I from what I understand the government has suggested that people stay away from their houses, especially if there's been damage because they're worried about collapses, they're worried about gas explosions. Can you just tell me what you're doing?
Yes, something that I was watching yesterday and and I think this is really important is that the really hard damage was to the tall and all buildings and the houses are better than those buildings. The the houses with floor or maybe two doors, it's okay, the majority. But the buildings, the really old windows from fifty years ago, everything crashed, everything. And with people inside, that's crazy.
What do you need right now and what do you think the people around you need? What what what sort of help are you hoping to get?
Well first of all, first medical needs for a lot of people, even for my family. Obviously water, principal foods to stay for these days because Problem is that we don't know how long the recovery is going to take. We don't know if we're going to get another earthquake, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, because last night we have several, but smaller, you know.
Yeah, and I mean there hasn't been an earthquake. People are saying there hasn't been an earthquake this strong in Venezuela perhaps for a hundred years or
Um
more. It presumably is is going to be a huge task to rebuild. A city like La Guayra.
Yeah, I I think that the main problem here in La Guayra and this is an important fact, in nineteen ninety nine It was a natural disaster here in La Guaira because it started raining, raining and raining, and the rivers and the beach, everything collapsed, everything, all all the houses. And from that moment uh they start building different buildings with uh really bad infrastructure. So I think that most of the buildings that fell off yesterday are the ones that were built with poor condition.
Kelvin uh Padilla in La Guayra speaking to Newshow's Tim Franks. Well, from uh one man who escaped with his dog, we're gonna turn to a woman who
¶ Caracas Residents' Plight and Resourcefulness
escape from her apartment with cats because uh earlier I got through to Maria, she's an English teacher in Caracas, she was due to move her apartments in a week's time, so when the earthquake struck and she was forced out of her current one, she wanted to find out whether the new apartment was still standing.
I went there at four ayam in the morning to see if we could move to that one, but when I got there it was a total disaster. So I ended up sleeping in the car with my cats and my party.
So what now? The the current apartment where you live is too dangerous to return to, the one you are going to move into is destroyed. What what are you going to do?
Well, right now I'm I'm living in a friend's house. She has been very kind and we're here now with three cats. and me and this other person. So we're going to be here for a couple of days and then we'll see because we don't really know that are many buildings affected and uh we don't know where to go.
What is happening at the moment in in Caracas. What what is the rescue effort like as far as you can see?
Well in Caracas uh there are some rescue teams that are trying to get people out of the uh out of the place in which in which they got trapped. But the thing is that they need more tools like equipment to get them out of there. Now they are doing just manually. There are not like these machines that could help them to make the work faster. You know, like people, the the relative families, they are doing that too.
And there are as um like groups, like civil society groups that they have been creating lists of people who are missing and they also created a webpage in which you can report not only the person that is missing but also like the name, a photo and of course like a picture or the name of the building in which this person was supposed to be. They say like the name of the building, the location of the building.
and uh that's how we know uh preliminar number of missing people. Of course this is not an official record, but yesterday by eleven twenty PM the amount of missing people was ten thousand. I mean the one that were re that the ones that were reported on that page. And about five hundred more, they said that information on the page were fine.
Sound.
Can I ask you, Maria, what about your your friends and and your family? Are they all accounted for or there any people you you don't know where they are?
Uh I just one person was missing my aunt and we were calling her, we were calling the f her friends because she precisely lives in the inagata, which is like a city in La Guaira in the state that Delcy Rodriguez declared as the disaster area. And uh we were really worried about her. We tried to get there, but we couldn't.
One hour ago we received a message and she wrote like I'm okay. I was rescued. I was reborn again. I had another opportunity. I'm going to Caracas. I will call you as soon as possible.
Possible.
That must have that must have been a huge relief.
Yes, it is, to be honest.
And can I ask you about communication? Uh what used to be known as Twitter, which has not been working in Venezuela, is working now, for example.
Yes, Twitter was blocked in two thousand twenty four if I'm not wrong. Yesterday some organizations, some NGOs they were asking please unblock X, unblock Twitter because that That's one of the most used social networks here in Venezuela. People get informed on that social network. All of a sudden, when people were were trying to get to open their their accounts.
they saw that it was not locked anymore, so they started to share information in there. And that's when we started to see, okay, like this is like really massive crisis or disaster.
And what kind of help would you like to see what kind of support would you like to see from the government?
Well, I would like to see especially for other people that are in a worse position than I than I am, because we see people in the streets, they slept in there all night and there are kids A lot of kids and hundreds of elder they were asking, they were trying to get not only like a place to be, they they say like, well, maybe I I cannot get a like a house right now or an apartment, but at least I would like to have a
tent because I'm here with my kids and I would like to get also some food because we need to eat. There's a part in Caracas in San Bernardino in which there's a residential building and three three towers. And forty eight families were living in each of these towers and all of them were outside. And they said like this is unbearable, like we cannot live like this for long.
That was Maria, an English teacher in Caracas speaking to me earlier. We'll return to Venezuela later. Uh we'll be hearing from our correspondent in Caracas and we'll be hearing more about the international efforts to help with the search and rescue operation. You're listening to the BBC World Service. This is News Hour, coming to you live from London with James Kamarasami.
¶ Discovery of Giant Superpuff Planets
Astronomers have discovered what they are calling two giant super puff planets orbiting a very distant star. They are each said to be as big as Jupiter and lighter than Candy Floss. Huge in size then, but tiny in density. Their atmospheres are thought to be rich in hydrogen and helium, according to the study, published today by the Royal Astronomical Society.
The study was led by the University of Oxford, Oxford and doctor George Dransfield is an astrophysicist from that university, and I asked her, what is a super puff planet?
As you said before, Superpuff Planet is a planet that's, you know, really, really big, but very underdense. for its size. So I mean, you know, things that are roughly the size of Jupiter, we might expect them to be the density of Jupiter, but these things are about 20 times lighter than Jupiter itself. So it's a very, very surprising find.
And two of them together.
Yeah, exactly. So I mean, we've discovered so far about six thousand three hundred odd planets. Of those, um about thirty seven of them are superpowers. But only four other systems contain more than one superpath. So this system is really special because it's not just multiple superpaths, but they're the biggest ones you've ever found. And the star is nice and bright. So that means that we can actually do a deep dive to, you know, investigate the system
And that I was gonna say the brightness, is that how you found them? Because the star nice and bright, but what a more than a thousand light years away.
Yes, definitely. Over a thousand light years away. Um the brightness of the star helped, but um we actually discovered them using the transit method, um, which is when a planet passes in front of the star along our line of sight and blocks out a small amount of light temporarily. So we get that dip in brightness that allows us to infer the presence of a planet.
Interesting. I'm not sure if this is your turn of phrase, but it's a a rather lovely one. That they are comparable to a nice blob of shaving foam.
That is indeed my turn of phrase. Yeah, if you if you squirted some of shaving foam into your hand, then that's the kind of density that we're talking about for these planets overall.
Wow. And what do we learn from them?
So whenever we find something that's an outlier that doesn't kind of fit our understanding of planet formation, it allows us to kind of extend our understanding of how planets can form and the diversity of w of the outcomes of planet formation. I mean, if you look at the solar system only, then you really wouldn't think planets are that diverse.
But exoplanets have shown us that some very weird and wonderful things can happen out there. And superpuffs, especially double superpuffs, they're huge outliers. So it really allows us to understand our place in the cosmos.
Just remind us and I think you're at a conference about exoplanets, but remind listeners what exoplanets are.
So exoplanets are planets outside the solar system. Most of them we think are just orbiting other stars, so any star other than the sun, but there's a bunch of them that are free floaters. We call them rogue planets and they're just kind of, you know, wandering solo through the universe.
Wandering lonely as a planet. Um yes, very poetic. Doctor George Dransfield, astrophysicist from Oxford University, who actually led that team of international astronomers who uh discovered those uh two super puff planets.
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¶ Hong Kong: Shrinking Freedom of Speech
It seems that the already shrinking space to speak and read f write freely in Hong Kong is getting smaller. The owners of one of the territory's last remaining independent bookshops were arrested this week and charged with displaying seditious items.
Letitia Wong, former Pro Democracy District Councillor and her business partner at the Hunter Bookstore, have also been accused of receiving remittances from foreign political organizations. Well Carmen Lau is a Hong Kong activist in exile here in the UK. She has a bounty of
one million Hong Kong dollars on her head under the twenty twenty National Security Law, which is being used against people espousing anti Beijing views. She's also a friend of Letitia Wong's. I asked her why she thought her friend had been arrested.
It is because of her idea of being remaining resilient after uh the government tries to uh repress further to the city.
And what kind of books was she selling? What are the kind of items that will have uh led the authorities in Hong Kong to arrest her?
Uh there are a couple of books being deemed sensitive by the national security police. And uh uh that includes uh actually one of the children's book book called The Ship Village that she displayed in her bookstore, and also uh one of the bibliography of Jimmy Lai and uh among the other uh political books or books offered by former political figures. And
Jimmy Ly, of course, is someone who's fallen foul of the authorities as well.
Yes.
Bye.
For his for his publishing. Now tell us about her. You know her. What kind of a person is she? W how will she be um coping with this? What what's how will she be viewing what has happened to her?
Uh so I actually uh got to meet her when uh we both ser be we both served at the C Vic Party and when we both were the district councillor. But before that she was also a journalist. uh in Hong Kong. And after the crackdowns and the implementation of the national security law in 2020, uh she resigned
uh from her seats as district counselor then she uh founded this bookstore. And the reason of the uh she found the reason of she founding this bookstore is that she wants to um create a space for uh ideas exchanging and also for promoting reading and also thinking in the already tightened uh uh uh uh freedom in Hong Kong and she remains one of one of the most resilient people that I've met. Uh and she also decided to stay in Hong Kong. I think this is very courageous of her.
But she now faces potentially years in prison if she's found guilty.
Yes. Uh so she is facing one charge of uh uh sedition and the other charge of money uh prote uh money laundering, uh under the national security ordinance, uh that is the Article twenty three. And uh
Did sh did she did she go into this with her eyes open? I mean she must have realized that this was a possibility. A strong possibility.
From the previous uh interviews that she had with uh some Hong Kong media outlets. uh she mentioned that she had that expectation of uh uh mental expectation of being arrested eventually. It's just a matter of time. Um but I think she doesn't think that you know, selling books or owning a bookstore is anything. I think no one would ever uh believe that owning a bookstore is a crime in Hong Kong.
But she is not the first independent bookseller in recent months t to uh face arrest, is she? And I mean how many independent, genuinely independent bookstores are left?
Uh so yes, she's the second case. So uh around three, four months ago there was another uh uh bookstore owner being arrested uh under the national security law as well. And for now, uh we s approximately we still have around seventy independent bookstores in Hong Kong. It's it is a significant decreased number than before the implementation of the national security law and the Article
And that was Carmen Lau, a Hong Kong activist, currently in exile here in the UK, uh speaking about her friend Letitia Wong, the uh bookseller who has been arrested. And just to bring you an update on what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz, where the UN's international maritime organisation, the IMO, has paused the planned evacuation of more than eleven thousand sailors
who were stranded in the strait after a cargo ship passing through the waterway was attacked. The uh head of the IMO, Arsenio Dominguez, said several boats had already been evacuated But the agency wanted to ensure that necessary safety guarantees would continue to be in place. The British Maritime Security Agency has reported on Thursday a ship had been stuck
Seven point five nautical miles southeast of Amman's port of Daheet by an unknown projectile. No casualties were reported. You are listening to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.
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The Signal Awards recognize the podcasts that define culture, and being honored by the Signal Awards sets your production team apart. With recognition from the industry's top experts, and access proof that your work is a standard bearer for podcasting worldwide. By entering, your work is heard by the Signal Awards Judging Academy, an invitation only. only body of podcast professionals from acclaimed organizations
Which include the BBC. Grow your audience, celebrate your team, and stand out. The final entry deadline to submit is the twenty sixth of June. Enter your podcast at signalaward.com for consideration.
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How did a boycott Jimmy become a billionaire from posting videos?
Good bad billionaire. We're gonna find out how the world's most popular YouTuber East made his fortune.
He's buried himself in a coffin for days. and even recreated Squid Games or
But it all started when he gave a homeless man. So is he a philanthropist reshaping capitalism?
just the king of the attention.
find out on good bad billionaire Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcast.
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He's widely recognised as one of the greatest footballers in history.
He's won the prestigious Ballon d'Or award five times.
He's the all-time leading goalscorer in professional football.
And according to the blue. He's the first active footballer in history. Billionaire status.
Guess who we're talking about yet?
That's right. Billionaire is exploring the life and of football icon Cristiano Ronaldo. Listen now, wherever you get your be
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You're listening to the BBC World Service, this is NewsHour, coming to you live from London with James Kamarasami. Coming up uh next on the programme we'll be heading to Caracas getting an update on the situation in the Venezuelan
¶ Europe's Heatwave and Climate Adaptation
capital after those twin earthquakes on Wednesday. Uh but we're going to turn now to the heat wave in Europe where more temperature records have been broken today in both the UK and France. Now depending on where you're listening to us You might be looking at this current European heat wave and thinking, so what? But people in the UK are quick to point out that cities, homes and other parts of the infrastructure here are not built to cope with intense heat.
So what can be done about it? We've spoken to one woman in South East London who has taken an ambitious approach to keeping her house cool. This report from Lucy Thomas.
It's absolutely sweltering here in Sydenham in south-east London. It's about 35 degrees and I'm on the street in which Catherine's house is. And all the houses do look quite similar but I'm about to find out why Catherine's is so different.
Hi, Lucy!
Your house looks quite similar to a lot of the other houses on the street, but it's not similar. Can you tell me why that is?
Yeah, so we've done a retrofit for the house. So it's a sixties townhouse, a very standard British build. So we've got ground floor We've got a first level and a second level and basically what we did was replace the double glazed UPVC windows with triple glazed windows. We've added external blinds. and an awning and we also what we've done is we've added an um mechanical ventilation system to bring in air so that in when the windows are shut the house air doesn't stale.
Okay, so we're just heading up The stairs to the top of the house. And this is where we have the white external blinds.
If it's uh sunny and not super hot then we can have the blinds down but still have airflow into the room, so that the sunlight doesn't come directly into the room.
🔊 Vehicle
And I'm just looking up and there's what looks like a kind of white circular disc on the ceiling. And what what is that?
It's an outlet for the mechanical ventilation that we've got in the house.
Just gone into the bathroom. I'm actually gonna get in the back.
To have a look up.
On the left that's the inlet of the MBHR. So the air comes into there, it goes into a machine. In the winter it's great because there's a heat recovery, so basically the heated air in the room is then recovered before it goes out. And new air is brought in and then it's preheated. But in the summer it bypasses this heat recovery part. The air is then distributed throughout the house throughout these different vents.
It was a bit of a a costly exercise with the summers getting hotter, it probably is a lot more comfortable in the winter and a lot more energy efficient, and in the summer it's also a lot cooler.
One woman there in uh South London who's bought a put a lot of time, thought and uh and money as she said there into adapting her for the changing climate. That report was from the BBC's
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¶ Venezuela: Coordinated Rescue and Aid Response
You're listening to the BBC World Service. This is News Hour, coming to you live from London with James Kimarasami, and we're going to return now To our main story, the two big earthquakes that struck northern Venezuela on Wednesday evening. The latest figures one hundred and eighty eight people at least are dead. Thousands more are missing, many of them believed to be underneath.
The rubble, well communications with Venezuela have been quite difficult, but a short while ago we did manage to get through to our correspondent in Caracas, Vanessa Silva.
I'm right now in the Chacao municipality. This is one of the areas most affected in the city. Sin it's the point where the geological fault line runs through this area was affecting during the earthquake that hit the city in the nineteen sixty seven and is affecting now. So the damage that were at that moment are now being repeated and we can see uh buildings collapse Uh um we know that at least there are four in this municipality. Uh I was around two of them.
where many um people from the government uh rescue teams are gathering there also heavy machinery trying to remove the the concrete and y in the hope that look for survivors.
And how is that operation going?
Well I I I I can see how the Time is passing by, they become more organized. Uh, you can see people that n is not from this municipality but is from other areas, from Caracas that has come to bring food, water. s also supplies for the people that lives around because um beside the buildings that collapses there is also Um other um residential buildings that are affected. You can see the cracks on the walls, you can see inside some of the houses.
And what about the uh equipment situation? Do do the rescuers have enough equipment to try and get people uh out from under the collapsed buildings?
Well you know Venezuela has been in crisis along all these years. So the teams, the rescue teams are not the best equipped at this moment. Even the people is trying to work with their own hands uh the government called for the private sector to support with machinery, with heavy machinery, so volunteers has approached all the m militares of police corpses
And I I even saw like training dogs looking for people but we are not prepared maybe as other countries at this moment. But unfortunately the government has received uh calls from many countries around the world uh uh well wondering to come to Venezuela to help in this situation the people from Mexico that they have a huge experience in this
In these cases, um Caracas is is separated for the worst area just for a mountain. The north part of the city is El Avila mountain. That is what Separated us from the coast, the north coast of Venezuela, which was the the the state more affected.
at this moment. Um I read that the government is sending to them to that area like a mobile uh surgical hospitals of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces uh are en route to that uh where is the most affected and all it's not the first time that La Guayra is being affected by a natural situation catastrophe because in nineteen ninety nine it was a massive landslides that affected this region.
and many people died at that moment. So the numbers that you just mentioned maybe will be increasing in the
BBC's Vanessa Silva in Caracas. Well let's turn to the y international rescue efforts. Spain and France have said that they will send send dozens of specialists to Venezuela. Germany's promised six military transport planes.
And the US government has pledged one hundred and fifty million dollars in emergency aid. Well Tom Fletcher is UN under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. He outlined what the United Nations was doing to help with the search and rescue operation in Venezuela.
So I've had colleagues going in by land during the day today. We've cleared a runway at one of the military airports so we can start to land the Swiss team, which is going in first of all, a team of eighty overnight. You're talking about media. These are all people who've been trained by our specialists.
and are ready to go straight into action. We've got, of course, as well the dog teams that go in that help to pull people and identify where people are underneath the rubble. We are getting reports from our teams on the ground. We've got hundreds of people in country. of the voices they're hearing calling for help right now and we've got to get as many boots on the ground over the next few hours and save as many lives as we can and we'll do that.
Also helping with the efforts. Direct Relief, it's a humanitarian charity based in California that helps local and international search and rescue teams. deployed to areas hit by natural disasters. They've been involved in rescue efforts following a number of recent earthquakes. Craig Redmond is direct relief's chief operating officer. I asked him whether this initial day was the the crucial period for rescue teams.
Yeah, these first twenty four hours are the most essential time for search and rescue crews out there trying to save lives. pull people from rubble, uh making sure that as many people they can get to safety as possible. So this is that crunch time when it's so essential that we support those local search and rescue teams.
And that is a priority, is it? Supporting local teams rather than getting other teams into the country?
It is. Um, although we're supporting both local and international groups coming in for search and rescue, but uh as you know, those local groups are the ones that are there right now immediately That are responding faster than anybody. And the good news is that we have other skilled uh and experienced international groups coming in that we're supporting.
Supporting how?
Well, we'll be supporting them financially for the logistics around their trips as well as with those essential medicines that they're going to be needing. Um we have backpack kits that are full of those essential medicines and medical supplies. that they can use to treat people um that a as they need it, as they pull them from the rubble and so forth. It's so essential that we have those kits available immediately.
And the pulling from the rubble, what about um actual equipment that uh will help with that?
Yeah, they'll have equipment with them to help them lift and safely uh hold up um, you know, pieces of collapsed building and so forth. The thing we're looking for there though is this famous crush syndrome. This is the problem that happens after you pull someone from the rubble and what can happen to to the human body after that. It can be very, very dangerous dangerous and survivors need access to trauma care immediately afterward.
Can you tell us a bit m more about it for those that that don't know?
Yeah what can happen is af after someone has been in the rubble and they've been crushed. and they're pulled out, um, there are toxins in the muscles that can actually rush to the kidneys and cause actual kidney failure. So making sure that they have renal care available, uh, making sure that those people have access to support. Um this is a a well documented uh phenomenon that can happen after earthquakes.
You've got a lot of experience in providing assistance inside Venezuela itself, haven't you, as well as other countries? But in terms of Venezuela what What are the the the provisions like at the moment? What kind of s state is the healthcare system in, for example?
Yeah, we have a long history of supporting uh healthcare providers in Venezuela. We have a local network. of clinics and providers uh across the country. Um, as you know, uh, you know, the political situation there has been uh fairly uh challenged for a number of years, which means uh a lot of those facilities have been uh, you know, underinvested in.
Um and so we are looking to support them as the m days and weeks after this uh um earthquake are gonna be so critical. You have the emergency response first and then after that of course you have an already stressed healthcare system that will need support in the form of supplies, in the form of essential medicines and uh that's what direct relief will be doing.
What kind of window are we talking about when we look at the search and rescue operation? How how long typically can people survive if they are trapped under rubble?
Yeah, typically uh it's a matter of days. Um, James, the the the the clock is really ticking to make sure that we save as many people as possible as quickly as possible. And so those first responders, those sir ch search and rescue um crews are just so skilled and so important right now. Um so we're talking we're talking days, not weeks.
And how quickly can international teams get in, do you think?
Immediately. We have international teams on the way right now. Um some regionally are headed that direction, um some in uh others international are headed that direction uh and we're definitely in support of those uh organizations.
That was Craig Redmond, Chief Operating Officer of Uh Direct Relief, a humanitarian charity. Now it's quite a puzzle. How do you retrieve information from two thousand year old papyrus scrolls that were carbonized when Mount Vesuvius erupted?
¶ AI Unlocks Ancient Papyrus Scrolls
Now though, with the help of AI, scholars have managed to read some of the incinerated documents that make up the Herculaneum Library, and they've done it virtually without having to physically unravel the scrolls. Brent Seals is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Kentucky. He's one of the founders of the Vesuvius Challenge Project, which has been trying to virtually unwrap those scrolls, which look like lumps of cut charcoal or perhaps like colour.
uh uh logs without doing permanent damage to them. I asked him to explain the technology that has allowed them to unwrap the scrolls and read them.
Well, it is actually impossible to open it, which is why we're using X rays to be able to see inside and then software, including AI, to be able to actually read the evidence of the ink from the interior.
Wow. Just explain the the physics of that.
Sure. Um you can map the entire internal structure using what's called X ray tomography. It's essentially a three dimensional map of everything inside the scroll, but at a very, very fine resolution. And once you get that You can see where all of the folds are, not just the outer ones, right, but the interior wraps. And then the software lets us localize those folds and unwrap them.
And when you unwrap them, what have you found?
Well, what's really interesting is that um we can actually read coherent, complete manuscripts. What we've found are original books that were on the shelf in A D seventy nine when the volcano exploded.
And what have you learnt by uh being able to to read so much?
Well, first of all, we have some titles and authors that no one expected. For example, Philodemus on the Gods, Book Eight. Uh you know, it's it's kind of a shocking surprise to realize Philodemus wrote Uh a series of at least eight books on the gods. It's a little bit like
you know, realizing that there were more Harry Potter books than just the first two, you know, right? So I mean I it's an esoteric world, right, of ancient literature and classical uh uh study but um that's the kind of stunning thing that's coming out now.
Well it's uh quite an analogy. It does sound almost magical to have something that charred to a cinder and you can actually read. I mean something's charred to a cinder a couple of weeks ago, but this is two thousand years old.
Well it is. I mean you don't have just the volcanic, you know, damage, but you have aging for two thousand years, the archaeology. And then the last two hundred and fifty years, I mean, bless everyone's heart, but people did the best they could.
at, you know, trying to hold off and not everything got preserved. I mean a lot of things are fragmentary or even completely destroyed. So we're operating on three or four hundred of the worst of the worst and and we're actually reading those. So it's super exciting.
And that was Brent Seals, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Kentucky, and one of the founders of the Vesuvius Challenge Project. Which has been trying to virtually unwrap those ancient scrolls. And that brings us to the end of this edition of News Hour from all of us here. Goodbye.
Okay.
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