Monday Afternoon Update: Death Toll Rises After Turkey And Syria Earthquakes, NYC Ends COVID Mandate For Public Workers, And More

This article is a companion piece to today’s Morning Wire Afternoon Update. To listen to the podcast version, click here.

Earthquakes Rock Syria And Turkey, Thousands Dead

Turkey and Syria were rocked by two earthquakes within the past 24 hours which reached a 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude. Untold numbers are trapped in the wreckage with more than 3,000 killed so far – a number that is expected to rise.

China Accuses U.S. Of “Indiscriminate Use Of Force”

In an update to this morning’s episode of Morning Wire, China is now accusing the United States of using “indiscriminate use of force” after the U.S. military shot down the suspected Chinese spy balloon that traveled across the country over the past week. China insists that the aircraft was a civilian weather device.

Record Amount Of Americans Say They’re Worse Off Today Than When Biden Took Office

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll has found that a whopping four in 10 Americans say they are now financially worse off since President Biden took office. That is the highest percentage responding negatively in that poll since ABC/The Post began asking the question 37 years ago. The poll came just a few days before Biden is set to give his State of the Union speech.

Alleged Power Substation Attackers Arrested

The FBI arrested a Florida man and a Maryland woman for allegedly planning an attack on power substations around Baltimore. The FBI believes they were “racially or ethnically motivated,” intending to inflict quote “maximum harm” on the city’s power grid.

NYC Ends Covid Mandate For City Workers

New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that he will be ending the COVID-19 vaccination mandate for city workers starting February 10.

Kidnapped Missouri Children Found In Florida

Two children abducted in March 2022 from a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, were recently found in a Florida grocery store with their alleged kidnapper. Police in High Springs say they happened to run a routine tags check on a vehicle parked outside the Winn Dixie store, traced the info to a fugitive, and then found the woman inside the store with the 12-year-old boy and 11-year-old girl. The brother and sister will soon be returned to their family.

New Jersey Man Hired Hitman To Kill Teenager He Was Accused Of Sexually Assaulting, Police Say

Police say that a New Jersey man hired a hitman for twenty thousand dollars in bitcoin to kill a 14-year-old whom the alleged suspect was accused of sexually molesting. Authorities say that the man wanted to kill the minor so that he could not testify in an upcoming trial.

Twitch Suspends AI-Generated “Seinfeld” Knock-Off

Twitch has suspended the artificial intelligence generated 24/7 streaming show modeled after ‘Seinfeld’ after the character meant to be Jerry Seinfeld made a transphobic joke during a stand-up bit. The show, titled “Nothing, Forever” is programmed to watch the entirety of Seinfeld and then create a never-ending stream using the same style and plot devices, but with modern-day themes.

“I’m thinking about doing a bit about how being transgender is actually a mental illness,” the character said. “Or how all liberals are secretly gay and want to impose their will on everyone.”

Britain’s Nurses, Ambulance Workers Strike

Employees of Britain’s National Health Service started their largest strike in history on Monday. Tens of thousands of nurses and ambulance workers are demanding higher pay, but critics say their work stoppage is straining an already beleaguered health system and putting U.K. subjects at risk.

To listen to the audio version of this podcast, click here. And for more in-depth discussion of the biggest stories of the day, listen to the latest full episode of Morning Wire every morning.

Disney Cuts ‘Simpsons’ Episode That Mentions Forced Labor Camps From Chinese Platform

Disney, ever eager to avoid any confrontation with the Chinese Communist government, cut an episode of The Simpsons from Disney Plus streaming platform in Hong Kong that referenced “forced labor camps” in China.

The episode, titled “One Angry Lisa,” aired in October 2022 and showed the instructor of Marge Simpson’s virtual bike class state, “Behold the wonders of China. Bitcoin mines, forced labor camps where children make smartphones.” Another episode of the show that broadcast in 2005 mentioned the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and the Chinese government’s efforts to suppress knowledge of it; it was cut in 2021.

Cutting the episode had “more to do with the company’s ties, current and future, in mainland China,” Kenny Ng, associate professor at the Academy of Film at Hong Kong Baptist University, said, adding, “It could be strategic to eliminate any China-offending episodes.”

Yet the Hong Kong government, responding to the situation, stated that its recent film censorship regime, enacted in 2021 to prevent films from posing a risk to national security, “does not apply to streaming services,” Financial Times reported.

Hong Kong, formerly a British colony, was given to China in 1997.

In October 2019, speaking at the WSJ Tech Live conference on Tuesday, Disney CEO Bob Iger admitted that Disney would stay silent regarding the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests.

“What we learned in the last week — we’ve learned how complicated this is,” Iger said, as reported by Bloomberg. “The biggest learning from that is that caution is imperative. To take a position that could harm our company in some form would be a big mistake. I just don’t believe it’s something we should engage in in a public manner.”

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) blasted Iger, snapping, “‘Sell your soul to save your profits’ is going to be a helluva plot line for ‘Frozen 2.’ There are about a million Uyghurs in Chinese communist prisons who aren’t going to be visiting the Magic Kingdom anytime soon.”

Disney Company opened its $5.5 billion Shanghai Disney Resort in 2016. “Our dream comes true,” Iger boasted in Mandarin.

Liu Yifei, the star of Disney’s live-action “Mulan,” triggered an anti-Mulan boycott  after she expressed support for the Hong Kong police force putting down the pro-democracy protests, saying on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, “I support the Hong Kong police. You can all attack me now. What a shame for Hong Kong.”