hello and welcome to inside politics. i m john king in washington. thank you for sharing the sad news day with us. a massive earthquake shakes turkey and syria leaving thousands dead, buildings toppled. fear now that more will die waiting for rescues that won t happen in time. plus, super power spy games, right now american investigators are searching for the records of that chinese balloon, the weekend shoot down off the carolina coast, punctuating a tense moment between washington and beijing. and president biden enters tomorrow s state of the union with plan to spotlight his accomplishments but does so with americans, in a sour mood about his leadership, his management of the economy and his plan to wrangle inflation. up first tragic deaths and devastation, an enormous earthquake changing the landscape in syria and turkey be neath the feet of millions. the number of dead stands at 2300. it is sadly rising every hour. now, pulling people out is a constant, critica
this was miles out from where we were that we went this morning, and they essentially again, told us to turn back around, john. they followed us for a bit to make sure we were turning around. very serious making sure that perimeter stays. they believe this should be an easy recovery because it s only about 47 feet of water that that balloon crashed down to. remarkable search effort under way. let s bring the conversation in the room, joining me to share the reporting and insights, manu raju, aisha of npr, jeff mason of reuters and our national security analyst cory. i want to start with you, the first pieces get to quantico, the idea to recover as much as you can and study what was on this craft. if you listen to jim heinz, he says this is an intelligence coup. listen. this is enormous value in observing up close and personal an asset like this, whatever its capabilities, what is it
of mind, but this is really happening. plastics that we throw away every day, the straws, baht bottles, the bags, they ll come back and haunt in a big way. this is a beach in the cominute can republic. that s the ocean but you can t see the water. right now tons of plastic waste are washing up on the shore quicker than volunteers be able to haul it away. that s just one beach. at least 8 million tons of plastic goes into our oceans every year. this according to word economic forum. and that s like dumping the contents of one garbage truck into the ocean every minute. the united nations predicts that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. we ve been saying this for years, but the plastic keeps coming. much of it collecting in garbage patches like what you see here, huge islands of plastic underneath the ocean, being swept along in the ocean currents. they re about 80,000 tons of plastic in our oceans.