--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Monday, February 6th, and this is your Morning Wire afternoon update.
--:-- John Bickley: Residents in East Palestine, Ohio, who live within one to two miles of the train tracks, were told to evacuate their homes this morning due to a raging fire caused by a catastrophic Norfolk Southern train derailment that was carrying hazardous materials on Friday.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Authorities plan to release toxic chemicals into the air from the five derailed tanker cars that are in danger of exploding, telling residents near the Ohio-Pennsylvania state line to leave immediately or face the possibility of death.
--:-- John Bickley: Ohio Governor Mike DeWine ordered evacuations in the area of the derailment that has been smoldering since Friday night. The vinyl chloride contents of five rail cars are currently unstable and could potentially explode, causing deadly disbursement of shrapnel and toxic fumes.
--:-- Georgia Howe: To alleviate the risk of this shrapnel, North Southern Railroad is planning a controlled release of the vinyl chloride at approximately 3 pm.
--:-- John Bickley: The controlled release of the toxic chemicals also has the potential to be deadly if inhaled.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Turkey and Syria were rocked by two earthquakes within the past 24 hours which reached 7.8 and 7.5 on the Richter scale.
--:-- John Bickley: Thousands are trapped in the wreckage with more than 2,300 killed so far, a number that is expected to rise.
--:-- Georgia Howe: A spokesperson for the Syrian civil defense is calling on world powers for help.
--:-- Syrian Civil Defense Spokesperson: It's a very difficult task for us. We need help. We need the international community to do something to help us, to support us. Now we see it now. It's a disaster area. We need help from everyone to save our people.
--:-- Georgia Howe: 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.
--:-- John Bickley: China insists that the aircraft was a civilian weather device.
--:-- Georgia Howe: A new ABC News Washington Post poll has found that a whopping 4 in 10 Americans say they are now financially worse off since President Biden took office.
--:-- John Bickley: That is the highest percentage responding negatively in that poll since ABC and The Post began asking the question 37 years ago.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The poll came just a few days before Biden is set to give his State of the Union speech.
--:-- John Bickley: The FBI arrested a Florida man and a Maryland woman for allegedly planning an attack on power substations around Baltimore that were, quote, racially or ethnically motivated, intending to inflict, quote, maximum harm on the city's power grid.
--:-- Georgia Howe: New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that he will be ending the COVID-19 vaccination mandate for city workers starting February 10th.
--:-- John Bickley: Two children abducted in March of 2021 from a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, were recently found in a Florida grocery store with their alleged kidnapper.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Police in High Springs say they happened to run a routine tags check on a vehicle parked outside of the Winn-Dixie store, traced the information to a fugitive, and then found the woman inside the store with the 12-year-old boy and 11-year-old girl.
--:-- John Bickley: The brother and sister will soon be returned to their family.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Police say that a New Jersey man hired a hitman for $20,000 in Bitcoin to kill a 14-year-old whom the alleged suspect was accused of sexually molesting.
--:-- John Bickley: Authorities say that the man wanted to kill the minor so that he could not testify in an upcoming trial.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Twitch has suspended the AI 24 streaming show modeled after Seinfeld after the character meant to be Jerry Seinfeld made a transphobic joke in a stand-up bit.
--:-- John Bickley: 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.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Here's a bit from the controversial joke.
--:-- [Audio clip of the joke]
--:-- Georgia Howe: Employees of Britain's National Health Service started their largest strike in history on Monday.
--:-- John Bickley: 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 UK subjects at risk.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Those are your drive home updates this afternoon.
--:-- John Bickley: To learn more about these stories, go to dailywire.com.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And for more in-depth discussion of the biggest stories of the day, listen to the latest full episode of Morning Wire every morning.
