Monday morning news: February 20, 2023

For WORLD Radio, I'm Kent Covington. 

Biden to travel to Poland / Kamala Harris remarks / Graham on F-16s » President Biden is flying to Poland this week to mark the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He’ll meet with Polish and NATO officials to talk over ongoing support for Kyiv.

Vice President Kamala Harris over the weekend condemned Russia’s invasion.

HARRIS: The United States has formally determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity.

GOP Senator Lindsey Graham says he agrees with Harris on that point. He said the West should provide whatever Ukraine needs to fight back—including U.S. F-16s—and that most U.S. lawmakers agree.

GRAHAM: Virtually unanimous belief that we should be training Ukrainian pilots on the F 16. Today, so they get the jets as soon as possible.

President Biden is slated to arrive in Warsaw tomorrow.

Another earthquake survivor pulled from rubble over weekend, updated death toll »
Rescue teams in Syria and Turkey are still finding earthquake survivors—who have endured nearly two weeks buried under rubble.

AUDIO: [Arabic]

This man spent almost three hundred hours under shattered concrete and debris. He alerted his rescuers to other survivors elsewhere under the same building.

AUDIO: [BLINKEN and TURKISH OFFICIAL]

Meanwhile U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken visited earthquake-ravaged parts of Turkey on Sunday. And with regard to victims in Syria, Blinken said…

BLINKEN: We’re doing everything that we can, including making certain that there is absolutely no doubt that whatever sanctions there are against Syria don’t affect humanitarian assistance.

The death toll from the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria has surpassed 44,000. Tens of thousands more people are injured.

Blinken China meeting » Secretary Blinken also spoke Sunday about his weekend meeting with China’s foreign minister Wang Yi in Germany.

Blinken said he warned that China’s violation of U.S. airspace with a spy balloon “must never happen again.”

He told ABC’s This Week:

BLINKEN: I can't speak to their original intent. What I can tell you is this once over the United States, the balloon attempted to surveil very critical, important military installations. We protected the sensitive information that it was trying to surveil.

Blinken said he also warned his Chinese counterpart against supplying weapons to Russia for its war in Ukraine. He said U.S. intelligence reports that Beijing may be considering providing “lethal support to Russia.”

Jimmy Carter enters hospice care » AUDIO: Lord, we'd be amiss this morning if we did not lift President Carter to you. Lord, we pray that you be with his family…

An interim pastor at Jimmy Carter’s church in Plains, Georgia offering a prayer for the former president, who entered hospice care over the weekend.

After a series of hospital visits, he decided to forego further medical interventions and spend his remaining time at home with his family.

At the age of 98, Carter is the longest-living president in United States history.

Southern border » Lawmakers from Texas are renewing their calls for the White House and Congress to tackle the border crisis.

Congressman Lance Gooden:

GOODEN: Immigration and border security are two very different things, and Republicans know that we have an immigration issue, but we can’t address that until we secure the border.

Some House Republicans are pushing to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. They cite a record high of more than 2 million migrant encounters in the last fiscal year. And they say more than 1,400 migrants have died near the border since President Biden took office.

The White House claims the GOP isn’t serious about working together on solutions.

Asbury revival » After 12 days of continuous worship, a chapel service at Asbury University in Kentucky is winding down. University officials say they are no longer going to allow Hughes Auditorium to remain open to the public for 24 hours a day.

WORLD’s Zoe Schimke was on-site over the weekend as hundreds of people came in from all across the country to Wilmore, Kentucky.

SCHIMKE: It’s absolutely profound to me to see hundreds of happy, relatively calm, orderly people who don’t know each other willing to brave the cold and long lines just to get inside this chapel to have an experience.

Asbury University officials are now restricting the 8-to-10 pm gatherings in the chapel to just high school students and young adults under 25, although afternoon services will remain open to the public until Wednesday.

School administers say they want to ensure security and keep students accountable for their responsibilities.

Ant-Man tops weekend Box office » Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania conquered the weekend box office.

AUDIO: [Ant-Man and Wasp trailer]

The film grossed $104 million in its opening weekend domestically.

Avatar: The Way of Water came in second place with another $6 million. That was just enough to make it the third highest-grossing film of all time with more than $2.2 billion in total ticket sales. It bumped another blockbuster by director James Cameron from the spot: 1997’s Titanic.

The highest grossing film of all time is another James Cameron movie—the original Avatar with $2.93 billion in total ticket sales.

I’m Kent Covington. For more news, features, and analysis, visit us at wng.org. 

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