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tv   Newsday  BBC News  December 19, 2016 1:00am-1:31am GMT

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i'm karishma vaswani in singapore. the headlines: a philippine senator who's calling for the impeachment of president rodrigo duterte tells us she fears for her life, but won't be silenced. myanmar‘s leader, aung san suu kyi, calls an emergency meeting to discuss the rohingya crisis. i'm kasia madera in london. after three days of delays and disagreements, the evacuation of besieged eastern aleppo resumes once more. and the original showbiz celebrity, hollywood actress, tabloid star and socialite zsa zsa gabor has died at the age of 99. live from our studios in london and singapore. this is bbc world news. it's newsday.
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good morning. it's 1am in london and 9am in singapore and the philippines where there's a new twist in the controversy surrounding president rodrigo duterte. a philippine senator, who's calling for the impeachment of president duterte, has told the bbc she fears for her life, but won't be silenced. leila de lima, a former justice minister, said she'd taken on extra security since she began criticising the president's war on drugs. greg dawson reports. it was the promise to rid the philippines of its drug trade that helped president rodrigo duterte to power just six months ago. but his ruthless crackdown has led to reports of torture, disappearances and even brutal murders. now a senator in the philippines is calling for the president to be kicked out of office after he admitted last week that he personally killed three suspects while he was a city mayor.
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leila de lima, a formerjustice minister, is one of the few leading politicians in the country to speak out against the president's anti—drug campaign. stop it but she told the bbc she now fears for her life. there are real security threats against me. i of course take extra security measures, i have my own security compliment, but i cannot be cowed into doing and saying what i want to do and say. president rodrigo duterte's landslide election victory earlier this year came after a campaign pledge to kill 100,000 criminals in his first six months in office. critics say he's encouraged police and vigilantes to shoot drug dealers and users on—site. reports say more than 6,000 men, women and children have been killed since may.
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despite his admission to the bbc that he personally killed suspects himself, the president was adamant he was still fit for office. given the problems in my country, yes. i have 4 million drug addicts in my country, so that is not a joke. last week the united states deferred a vote on a major aid package for the philippines because of concerns about human rights abuses. but now the criticism is also coming from within the country. leila de lima says she may be fearing for her life but she won't be silenced. greg dawson, bbc news. let's take a look at some of the day's other news. at least ten people, including a canadian tourist and seven policemen, have been killed injordan, after unidentified gunmen carried out a series of attacks in the historic city of karak. they targeted two police patrols in separate attacks, while gunmen also opened fire at the ancient crusader castle in the city.
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armoured personnel carriers racing through the streets of karak. they're responding to a series of shootings in and around the town by several gunmen. the security forces themselves seem to be the main target, and they desperately tried to establish who's firing and from where. the attackers flee to a mediaeval castle. police and security forces close in on them at the tourist attraction. the gunmen use the towers to fire down on the nearby police station, sending those inside ducking for cover. in the 12th century citadel, terrified tourists rush to safety. there were
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initial reports of hostages being taken, but all those trapped seem to have been freed. 0ne canadian is amongst the dead. the rest are all jordanian. the siege continued for hours, although no group has yet claimed responsibility. tonight the police operation drew to a close with a number of the attackers said to have been killed. victims have been taken to hospitals across the city. translation: i saw about three oi’ city. translation: i saw about three orfour injured with city. translation: i saw about three or four injured with my own eyes. 0ne or four injured with my own eyes. one had an injured eric dier mike la ke one had an injured eric dier mike lake and another a back injury, there were two or three more, so about eight injured people were brought here to karak hospital and to the injured jo military hospital. authorities say they have found a suicide belts in the hideout, labelling them terrorists. jordan has experienced attacks before but nothing like its neighbours. this is another blow to the country's reputation as an oasis of relative
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stability. secunder kermani, bbc news. also making news today: all 13 people on board an indonesian air force plane have been killed after it crashed into a mountain in the indonesian province of papua. the hercules c—130 lost contact with air traffic controllers shortly before it was due to land following a training exercise. bad weather is suspected to be the cause of the accident. donald trump's incoming chief of staff has played down the prospect of a change to the united states 0ne—china policy. the us has formal ties with china rather than the island of taiwan, which china sees as a breakaway province. the president—elect sparked a diplomatic protest from beijing after he took a congratulatory phone call from the president of taiwan. but reince priebus says revisiting the policy is not on the table right now. real madrid has won football's club world cup for the second time in three years. the club survived a scare to beat japanese side kashima antlers 11—2 in extra—time. they were helped by a star performance from cristiano ronaldo who scored a hat—rick. and heavy fog continues to envelop cities in northern china.
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authorities in hebei province issued an orange alert, with some areas suffering visibility of less than 200 metres. pollution in the capital, beijing, has reached ten times the level considered safe by the world health organization. the leader of myanmar, aung san suu kyi, has called an emergency meeting of regional foreign ministers on monday to discuss the rohingya crisis. it comes just three days after the un condemned her government for its treatment of the minority muslim population. in the bangladeshi capital, dhaka, police stopped thousands of demonstrators from marching to the border with myanmar to protest against the persecution of the rohingya. there have also been ongoing protests in indonesia, malaysia and thailand. human rights groups want a full resolution of the crisis. 0ur correspondentjonah fisher is in yangon with more details. i think the first point to make it is very
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rare for asean, this collective group of south—eastern asian countries to meet, to discuss what is widely seen as an internal issue, a burmese problem and a problem local to myanmar but the fact it's happening is the sign of regional pressure for aung san suu kyi, especially in malaysia, najib razak talked of genocide in rakhine state state a couple of weeks ago and also from indonesia, which is a muslim country. aung san suu kyi has been pressured into doing this, she didn't want to do it. what will come out of it? well, my hunch would be not very much. the fact she is holding the meeting is a gesture on her part she is taking their concerns seriously. it is a closed—door meeting. we are expecting little to be visible from the outside and not very much to be seen in terms of press access. jonah, we've seen the international community piling
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on pressure on aung san suu kyi, she was once one of the world's most celebrated icons. has the international community lost patience with her? they've lost patience with her on one thing in particular, which as been humanitarian access to northern rakhine state. 150,000 people were receiving aid here before this crisis flared up in early october. at the moment it's about 20,000 people being reached. what's frustrating diplomats and un workers is whenever they meet aung san suu kyi or her officials they're promised this access will come soon and that things will be opened up to aid workers and then it doesn't translate into anything on the ground. there is this accumulating frustration, we saw in un statements last week, strong ones from diplomats and human rights chiefs, they feel they've invested a lot in aung san suu kyi and they're really trying
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to back her but she's not delivering on what she's talking to them about behind closed doors. after another day of tension and delays, buses and ambulances have tonight been leaving eastern aleppo, carrying civilians out of the former rebel enclaves. at least 350 people are said to have left in the convoy, heading west towards government territory. a limited evacuation last week was stopped on friday because of disagreements between the sides. here's our correspondent quentin somerville, and i should warn you, there are distressing images in his report. if only the ceasefire in aleppo hadn't collapsed, then this might never have needed to happen. they're doing the best they can here, but this hospital is barely functioning. these are not surgeons. there are none left in eastern aleppo, so nurses
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perform the operation. it's a caesarean. translation: the child has a birth defect. we immediately brought the mother here to the operating room for a caesarean, which we are doing now. the mother is in a bad way, and her baby boy, even worse. but everyone here is at their wits' end. eastern aleppo is out of options. translation: as soon as the patient arrived, i told the red cross that a patient needed emergency surgery, but there was no answer because the evacuation is still suspended. in eastern aleppo's final days, all niceties have vanished. if only it continued the baby may have survived some of the sick made it out of here on thursday but not nearly enough. after 2a hours, the ceasefire collapsed. there are now 100 badly injured people trapped here. he has been stuck here for three days, says this man. "he has a head injury."
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"we've tried to leave but they stopped us." they've now run out of room inside, so outside the hospital, the dead and injured are piling up. translation: i've been coming and going forfour days now. in the morning they promised to take us with ambulances and we've been waiting since then, but what else can i do? and here's one of the hold—ups. rival factions attacked buses that were meant to free trapped sick and injured in shi'ite villages. only when they are freed will the regime allow convoys to again leave eastern aleppo. and only after aleppo's misery would you consider this salvation. this is the atma camp in idlib. evacuees are brought here. when they arrive, they have nothing. the buses that bring them are so crowded there is no room for luggage, but here, there's relief.
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translation: rockets, russian jets and warplanes all bombing us, barrel bombs dropped over us. we kept fleeing from one place to another. there was hunger, poverty, and sleeping in the streets. and finally, the red cross got us out. this woman made it here with her twin girls, amina and fatmah. the camp may be crowded but here the sisters can breathe again. translation: it is better than it was in aleppo, there's no bombing. we have new friends walking and playing together. there was a food shortage back there. but we're eating more here. we hated life, but here we are eating biscuits and everything. and that's what's at stake here. every minute, every hour of the ceasefire that is lost, is another moment of life denied to the children of aleppo. quentin sommerville, bbc news, istanbul. you're watching newsday on the bbc.
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still to come on the programme: it's a rare form of cancer that affects asians twice as much as europeans. an expert tells us about the surprising results of his research. also on the programme: why these uninhabitable landscapes in antarctica hold a clue to earth's future. after eight months on the run, saddam hussein has been tracked down and captured by american forces. saddam hussein is finished because he killed our people, our women, our children. the signatures took only a few minutes, but they have brought a formal end to 3.5 years of conflict that has claimed more than 200,000 lives. before an audience of world leaders, the presidents of bosnia, serbia and croatia put their names to the peace agreement. the romanian border was sealed and silent today.
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romania has cut itself off from the outside world in order to prevent the details of the presumed massacre in timisoara from leaking out. from sex at the white house to a trial for his political life, the lewinsky affair tonight guaranteed bill clinton his place in history as only the second president ever to be impeached. this is newsday on the bbc. i'm karishma vaswani in singapore. i'm kasia madera in london. our top stories: the philippine senator who's calling for the impeachment of president duterte, leila de lima, has told the bbc that she now fears for her life. under mounting international criticism, the leader of myanmar, aung san suu kyi, has agreed to an emergency meeting of regional foreign ministers on monday to discuss the growing rohingya crisis. ceremonies have taken taken place
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in the nepalese capital, kathmandu, to mark the death of the last king of the isolated himalayan region of upper mustang. king bista, who reigned the buddhist kingdom for more than half a century, died on friday aged 86. let's take a look at some front pages from around the world. the china daily focuses on the controversy over the discovery of a us drone in the south china sea. the newspaper attacks what it describes as president—elect donald trump's inexperience in diplomacy in his reaction to the incident. the south china morning post also leads with the drama over the drone. it says that beijing is expected to demand that the united states scales down its surveillance in the south china sea as china agrees to hand back the seized underwater drone. and the philippine daily inquirer has a story on the health of the nation's president,
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rodrigo duterte. one of the country's leading politicians says mr duterte should end speculation about his well—being following his admission he used the powerful painkiller, fentanil. now, karishma, there's a lot of excitement on—line about a certain film. yes, indeed. the force is certainly with them. rogue one, the latest in the star wars movie franchise, has had the second biggest december in history. globally, the film has earned $290 million, after touching down in nearly every major foreign market apart from china and south korea. devoted fans, including these ones, can expect even more star wars spinoffs in the future. ancient ice deep beneath antarctica could help forecast the earth's future climate. a team of glaciologists are searching for the oldest ice on the planet to analyse its record of the makeup and temperature of the earth's atmosphere over hundreds of thousands of years. dr mark curran explains more. ice might seem like a very simple,
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uninteresting substance. however, ice can hold information on the history of the climate of our earth. i'm dr mark curran, a glaciologist who studies ice cores. if you imagine you're on the surface of the antarctic ice sheet, its white as far as the eye can see and it starts to snow. this snow contains information from our atmosphere and in antarctica, the snow simply builds up through time in layers and it never melts. so we can then go and drill that ice to see all of that climate information from the past. you recover 2—3 metres of ice core on each run and bring it to the surface and then send the drill down again for the next 2—3 metres. when the ice cores are brought
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to the surface, the ice core itself is sectioned into pieces. we measure chemicals in the ice itself and we measure chemicals in the air that's trapped as snow flakes. we record a number of climate parameters, temperature, carbon dioxide, solar activity and volcanic activity, because understanding how the climate behaves naturally in the past is the key to modelling our future. working in these environments can be pretty extreme. after all, antarctica is the harshest place on earth. but in the end, it is worth it for what we find out of the core. we'll gain an understanding of why the earth's ice age cycles have changed — something that we currently don't know. and the work will help us to predict the earth's climate into the future. i find it incredible that a small piece of ice can tell us so much
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information about the biggest questions we have about the earth's future. cancer is singapore's biggest killer, accounting for three out of every ten deaths. sarcoma is a rare but aggressive tumour affecting all parts of the body. now, for the first time, a study here in asia has looked at a particularly rare type of the disease. sarcoma is a cancer of the soft tissue such as fat cells, muscle cells, bones and blood vessels. angiosarcoma is a cancer of the blood vessel and circulatory system. it is very rare. prognosis is poor. generally, survival is less that one year for those with advanced disease. a short time ago, i spoke to the principal investigator of the study, professor richard quek, from the national cancer centre in singapore. about a year ago, the investigators in asia were looking into sarcoma
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research, and in this, we found that angiosarcoma represented a higher proportion of patients than we had anticipated. in our study where there was 7%, compared to 3% or 4% in the western population and that got us a bit interested in this subject and we wanted to develop deeper into the cancer cell type. so to that end, we brought together investigators across agency so to that end, we brought together investigators across asia and pooled together the information that we have to look at the rare disease. so far, the data that we have out there tends to be of smaller groups of patients, smaller subsets where definite conclusions could be drawn. what does the research then tell us about the cases of sarcoma in asia? why are there so much more here than in other parts of the world, as you've just been saying? clearly that's an area of interest for us to investigate. it is, indeed a higher incidents. what we found was a higher proportion of sarcoma, particularly in angiosarcomas. so to that answer, we're uncertain and certainly more research needs to be done in that area to look
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at factors that may account for it. in terms of angiosarcomas, what did you find in terms of how they translate into some of the common cancers we know about? what can you tell us about that? in our study, we had 423 patients and that makes it the largest internationally. and that was the first in asia. we found two very interesting findings. number one is that chemotherapy did help patients. but interestingly, only half of the patients received chemotherapy and led us to think — why is that the case? what happened to the other half? and that would be the subject of the next research interest to find out what exactly is happening on the ground across asia. the second point that we found was that in patients with seemingly localised disease, we tended to do surgery. but in those patient, only 70% of patients could achieve negative margins and in about a third, the disease was still left behind and this impacted on survival outcomes immediately. and going by that rationale, it is important, therefore,
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to provide some form of treatment to downside the control of the disease before surgery with the hope that we can remove the tumours cleanly and improve on clinical outcomes. briefly, what do you plan to do with the research now that you have it? the first of which is that investigators would need to go back and look into why the use of chemotherapy is much less than we anticipated. and secondly, we may need to rethink our strategy to see whether we should offer patients some form of pre—operatve treatment to improve clinical outcomes. professor richard quek from the national cancer centre, singapore. the hungarian—born actress and socialite zsa zsa gabor, has died. her age was a closely guarded secret, but she was thought to have been 99. she made more than 60 films, but became better known for her husbands, who by her own reckoning, numbered
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eight—and—a—half. she didn't really count a spanish duke who she left after a few hours. this report from nick higham contains some flashing images. zsa zsa gabor may have been a great beauty, but she was never a great actress. i know everything — i heard the verdict. it's dangerous for you to come here. i must take that risk, and so must you. her screen career was undistinguished, though it did include camp classics like the truly terrible queen of outer space. if you must go, promise me you're going to come back to me. her greatest role was as herself, one of the first professional celebrities, famous for simply being famous. she was rich, she was gorgeous, she was outrageous and she ate men for breakfast. her last marriage, in 1986, was her eighth, or ninth, if you include an illegal ceremony conducted at sea. women don't even get married any more today. theyjust have love affairs. i was raised in a convent. they said you have to get married, legalised, which was done but now ijust leave myself to live in sin, it's wonderful. girls, don't get married.
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it's insanity. you have to become their servant. we have to look after their house and they cheat on you. who the hell needs that? in 1989, she was brieflyjailed for hitting a hollywood traffic cop twice her size. she was well into her 70s, though during the court case she was accused of doctoring her driving licence to disguise her age. by then, herfilm career had collapsed into self—parody. here she is with frankie howard. every time i see you, i get lumps in my throat. but she never lost a certain innocence, nor her wit. as she once said, "i'm a marvellous housekeeper. "every time i leave a man, i keep his house". you have been watching newsday. stay with us. google reveals the most searched business and investing words in asia in 2016. we'll be looking at that. stay with bbc world news. that's all for now. thank you for watching. goodbye. a huge week of pre—christmas travel
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plans, and with different weather challenges either end of the week. now, what we'll see later in the week is actually governed by what's happening in us and canada at the moment. a big freeze at the moment. much of the continent starts below freezing, but the temperature contrasts in the south—east. this fires up a jet stream that will charge towards us this week bringing ever deeper areas of low pressure later on. that will give us a challenge later in the week. the challenge again this morning is contesting with the fog. having an impact on some of the roads and airports. probably worst across parts of western england and wales this morning. some dense patches of fog in places across the south—west. a pretty grey and dismal start for many. maybe not quite as foggy as east anglia and the south—east has been in recent days which could be good news in the airport. some of the higher ground will see some fog and we will see some fog
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in the higher ground of northern england. the fog not as much of an issue in scotland and northern ireland. maybe even north—east england. but here the sunshine will start the way and western scotland cloud. patch and drizzle affecting northern ireland. not a huge amount of wet weather. we will finish the day with some brightness. elsewhere, though, remains cloudy and misty in some western areas and later on in eastern england, patches of light rain or drizzle. temperatures to finish monday where they should be for the time of the year but feeling cool where the mist lingers. heavy rain developing in the south in monday night. patchy rain in england and wales. misty over the hills. but clear england and wales skies. scotland and northern ireland, and here, coldest night of the week, with frost in places, and for northern ireland, could be a foggy start to tuesday morning. still fog an issue for one or two of you for tuesday. probably worse in northern ireland and in the hills andier bursts in the south.
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through central and eastern england, brighter afternoons in store than we've been used to for a while. but, at last, the arrival of some sunshine. some sunshine for eastern parts of scotland, but in the west, we start to see some rain. a cooler day by and large, but let's focus on that rain. western scotland and northern ireland, not just rain but strong winds. the strong winds are back. gale force across many areas into tuesday evenings rush hour. severe gales, if not storm force, across the north, thanks to this weather front bringing rain across the country and increasing winds as we go through the night and into wednesday. and that links into weather systems waiting in the wings being fired up by the jet stream i mentioned. fog could be an issue. strong winds and heavy rain later on. we'll of course keep you updated and take you through it each day step—by—step. i'm kasia madera with bbc world news. our top story: the philippine senator calling for the impeachment of president rodrigo duterte has told the bbc she fears for her life. the evacuation of people trapped in the rebel—held east of the syrian city of aleppo has resumed.
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reports say about 350 people on board have been able to leave. and this story is trending on ceremonies have taken taken place in the nepalese capital kathmandu to mark the death of the last king of the isolated himalayan region of upper mustang. king bista died on friday aged 86. that's all from me now. stay with bbc world news. and the top story here in the uk: talks aimed at stopping a british airways cabin crew strike over christmas are to be held later on monday. members of the unite union are due to walk out on christmas day
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