Today, Moscow is attacked. The UN publishes a report about Japan's plans to release wastewater from Fukushima. Turkey and Egypt restored diplomatic ties, NATO Chief Jan Stautenberg extends his term, and Vietnam bans Barbie. From telly on news, this is your daily briefing for Tuesday the 4th of July, 2023.
Russia has, today, claimed that they've intercepted a Ukrainian drone attack, which was aimed at the Russian capital. While they claimed that no one was injured in the attempted attack, one of the main airports had to reroute flights while the incident was ongoing. Speaking about the down drones, the Russian Defense Ministry said that four Ukrainian drones were shot down by Moscow's air defenses, and a fifth was jammed and crashed into the Audintzovo District of Moscow. Maria Zakarova, a foreign ministry spokesperson, went on to say that the key of regimes attempt to attack an area where civilian infrastructure is located, including the airport, which incidentally also receives foreign flights, is yet another act of terrorism.
The international community should realise that the United States, Britain, France, permanent members of the UN Security Council, are financing a terrorist regime. For their part, the key of government has not yet responded or claimed responsibility for the attack. This is in keeping with their well-established policy of not assuming responsibility publicly for attacks in Russia or Russian controlled territory in Ukraine. This attack comes on the back of months of increased drone attacks deep in the heart of Russia, with it likely that such attacks will continue in the future.
There's more on the way, but be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to make the daily briefing part of your daily routine, or just search for us on your podcast app to listen along. On March 11, 2011, a nuclear accident occurred at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. The cause of the accident was a powerful earthquake. In fact, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan.
The disaster caused a huge amount of contaminated wastewater, which Japan has been storing ever since. Today, though, a UN watchdog has said that Japan's plan to release this wastewater does comply with international standards. This follows a two-year safety review. The safety review concluded that the radioactive isotopes in the water are below what's considered harmful.
Many opponents additionally argue that the presence of tritium is a concern. However, Japan argues that it's considered relatively harmless, as it doesn't emit enough energy to penetrate human skin, and that the water will be diluted so that the tritium content is well below internationally appropriate levels before it's released into the Pacific Ocean. Japan had argued that it was running out of storage space for the water, with the plants producing 100 cubic metres of wastewater per day. Tokyo has not yet announced a schedule for the release of the water, and they're still awaiting approval from the regulator.
Irrespective, others in the region have signaled their disapproval of the plans, with China and South Korea being the most vocal critics of the plan. So that's what's been happening in Japan today. Let's move and discuss what's been happening with Turkey and Egypt. Turkey and Egypt have restored normal diplomatic ties and appointed ambassadors to their respective capitals for the first time in a decade.
A joint statement said, this step aims at the renormalisation of relations between the two countries and reflects the mutual will to improve bilateral relations in the interests of the Turkish and Egyptian peoples. The two regional powers fell out in 2013, after General Abdul Fatah El-Sisi, now the president of Egypt, led a coup to remove the elected president, Muhammad Morsi, who was affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood organisation. Turkish leader Recep Erdogan had been supportive of the Islamist group and critical of Sisi's rise to power. Amid the deterioration of relations, the country's ambassadors were expelled.
Turkey has been seeking to improve its ties with regional neighbours over the past couple of years, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The process of normalisation between Egypt and Turkey accelerated after a symbolic moment in 2022 when Sisi and Erdogan shook hands at the World Cup in Qatar. NATO allies have once again decided to extend the end Stoltenberg's term as Secretary-General of the Military Alliance. 64-year-old Stoltenberg, a former Prime Minister of Norway, began his four-year term as NATO's Secretary-General in 2014 and subsequently had it extended for another four years, meaning it was meant to end in September 2022.
But Russia's invasion of Ukraine prompted NATO members to seek stability in the alliance, so extended it again until September 2023. Now, after apparently failing to reach a consensus on his successor in the top job, NATO allies have agreed to extend Stoltenberg's term yet again until October 2024. He's already the second longest serving Secretary-General and will have spent a decade in the role come October next year. NATO have been due to announce its new chief at the upcoming leader summit in Vilnius, Lithuania next week, but evidently the 31-member bloc has been unable to come to an agreement.
Traditionally, the role of Secretary-General is held by a European, while the top military position is held by an American. There is reportedly a move by some members to appoint a woman to the Secretary-General position, with the likes of Danish Prime Minister Met Fredrickson as a potential option. Another name floated was UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace. However, it's understood that some NATO leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, are pushing hard for the next Secretary-General to be from an EU member state.
Regardless, members now have another year to work out who they want to lead them. The upcoming Barbie movie has been banned in Vietnam for its depiction of the disputed South China Sea on a world map. This is apparently the world map in question, and while it doesn't really resemble the actual world at all, it was apparently too much for Vietnam. State media quoted government censors as saying, We do not grant license for the American movie Barbie to release in Vietnam, because it contains the offending image of the Nine Dash Line.
This Nine Dash Line is what the People's Republic of China uses to outline its proclaimed territory in the South China Sea. It's not the first time that a movie has been blocked in Vietnam for depicting the Nine Dash Line. In recent years, the government has banned the movie's abominable, uncharted and the Netflix series Pine Gap for the same reason. The South China Sea is full of competing islands and maritime claims, not just between China and Vietnam, but also the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Taiwan.
The sea and its islands are important, not just strategically, but also economically, thanks to fishing waters and oil and gas fields. We end this main section of the briefing with some good news for Norway, Europe and perhaps the world, as a huge deposit to phosphate rock has been discovered in southwestern Norway. George Mining says it's the largest deposit in the world, at around 70 billion tons, and is big enough to satisfy world demand for fertilizers, solar panels and electric car batteries over the next 100 years. Some of the largest deposits can currently be found in places like Western Sahara, Russia, China, Algeria and Syria.
Recent reports suggest that there's a risk that phosphorus supplies will face disruptions for geopolitical and economic reasons, so a big discovery in Norway could help to avoid the situation. Norway's trade and industry minister said it's Norway's obligation to develop the world's most sustainable mineral industry. That's all we have time for on YouTube, but the briefing isn't over. That's because we discussed the final episode of TLDR's Race Across Europe in the extended edition of the Daily Briefing Only on Nebula.
And now it's time for us to sit down and discuss the final episode. I hated most of it, if not every second of it. We break the rules. It was not even mentioned on that, so I'll just keep it for like an hour or two.
Yeah, I don't have an excuse. Depends, do you even know that flights exist? I don't remember. Check the tapes.
And Ben was not happy. It did cause a huge argument. I would like to save my defence. Now it's worth saying that today the discussion is so long, it's about an hour, that we couldn't really tag it on the end of this video.
So instead it's on its own separate video and should be on the TLDR Daily Nebula channel page, so make sure you check it out there. That's the streaming service we're building with a bunch of our creator friends, many of whom you're likely to be already watching. That means that by signing up you not only get an extended and free Daily Briefing every single day, you also get to watch exclusive and ad-free videos from the best educational creators on YouTube. That's things like Real Life Lore's incredible modern conflicts, which breaks down contemporary disputes around the world, Neo's underexposure, which beautifully dives into complex and shadowy topics you've always wanted to know more about, or extremities from Wendover Productions, which uncovers some of the world's most remote places.
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