hello and welcome to our viewers joining us here in the united states and all around the world. you are watching cnn newsroom and i m rosemary church. just ahead, aid groups around the world are rushing to help turkey and syria after monday s deadly earthquake. i ll speak with the head of the norwegian refugee council, about the efforts to help survivors. plus, parts of the southern u.s. are surveying damage after severe storms ripped through the area. we re live at the cnn weather center with the latest. and after surprise visits to the u.k. and france, the ukrainian president is headed to belgium where he s been invited to an e.u. summit. we re live in brussels and london, on zelensky s unannounced diplomatic tour of europe. live from cnn center, this is cnn newsroom, with rosemary church. thanks for being with us. the death toll from the devastating earthquake in turkey and syria has nearly doubled in just the past 24 hours. now, more than 16,000. president erdogan
top of the hour this thursday. i m jim sciutto. i m erica hill. we begin this hour with the new reporting of the chinese surveillance balloon, and the state department is confirming that this device was capable of monitoring u.s. communications. that is likely one of the new details that lawmakers are learning this morning. the biden administration is giving classified briefings on the issue on capitol hill a short time ago, and we will give you more of what we are learning in a moment, and with reclosely following what is happening in europe. the ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy is calling on the european allies to step up the assistance and talking about specifically what they could do in his mind game-changers. fresh off of the sales pitch in wisconsin, president biden is headed to florida to expect to drive home his pledge in particular to protect social security and medicare, and we will have more on that message from the white house ahead. first of all to nat
the restrictions claiming rescue teams have been using twitter to communicate. our reporter is in turkey, as the golden period for finding survivors rapidly comes to a close. reporter: a 5-year-old emerges from underneath the rubble in turkey s hard hit city. one of hundreds of young lives saved. but for too many, it was too late. in this town, they mourned one of the many who did not make it out alive with. the death toll rising by the hour, this is a race against time. how many are buried in this massive quake zone, nobody really knows. estimates in the tens of thousands. here, search and rescue crews work tirelessly around the clock, digging through a 14-story residential building where families lay asleeve when the earthquake hit. survivors have gathered at the site of the rescue mission, and in the bitter cold, they huddle around these fires. everyone with the story of the horror they survived. the shock, the trauma, the pain visible on every face. parents doing what t