it's been a really long journey. and i guess, you know, we had this conversation before. so since mayor breed met with chinese president xi jinping last november when he's in town for apec summit, right. she has been asking him to get the pandas. and then it's been, you know, several months and then maybe follow with a couple letters sending to beijing and then physically, she is in china right now to get the pandas right. so it's been a long journey. and eventually beijing said, yes, okay, we will send a pair of panda to san francisco zoo. >> in fact, that photo you're

looking at, she tweeted out was from sfo the day of xi's departure. and she's in her reddest suit right there on the tarmac. and there was a very flattering post to go along with that. and i'm ready to admit this now, hon, i didn't want to make this public, but, you know, at the time i was like? is she angling for pandas? because i thought, what else could it be? >> yeah, you made exactly the right prediction and see what's happening right now. that's exactly what you were predicting at that time. >> okay, now let's talk about why right? why roll out the red carpet? why go through so much, jump through so many hoops to get giant pandas? why are they so special? >> yeah, i think for one reason, of course, panda will attract a lot of tourists into the city. into the zoo. right. and that will bring in a lot of economic opportunities to boost, you know, local tourism. you know, a lot of, you know, business will come to the area. right. for the other thing, millbrae is facing a really tough reelection campaign. and asian american voters, the asian american

community is very powerful, influential right now in the city because, you know, all the public concerns they're becoming very outspoken and politically engaged. so this panda from china, and she's also visiting china, which a lot of chinese immigrants are from. right. so might have some appeals to the community and maybe just overall helping her reelection campaign. yep and as you've reported as well, some of her rivals who are also running for mayor, lori feral peskin, they've all been making a lot of efforts to court that community, if you will. so the pandas obviously will score some points, but also this has benefits for china too, doesn't it? because the fact that china has restarted its panda diplomacy, if you will, sending out these furry ambassadors after kind of bringing them back home for a while. what does this say about where china is? >> yeah. so china has restarted this panda diplomacy program and

san francisco has been playing a really major role since the apex summit between this us and china relationship. right. and when mayor breed is in china, she also met with chinese vice president han zheng, which is a rare move by chinese leadership. considered maybe is just a local city level leaders. right? so san francisco has been very prominent in in this us, china, you know, global politics platform. and mayor bri asking for panda and now china sending panda. that's a really strong signal that china wants, you know, a better relationship with the us right now. and it's the improvement of this one of the most important global bilateral or international relations to right tensions had been running high between the country for, you know what, seven years now or more. >> so this could be a step. but for our viewers, and i think most people just look at them and think, wow, pandas are super cute, oh well, since we're

showing this video, i should ask you about this too. mayor breed also seemed to have met with chinese airlines executives talking about what is it bringing flights to sfo, yeah, because chinese tourists was, you know, the largest group that coming to san francisco and contribute a lot to local economy. right. but since the pandemic, that group of chinese tourists are not coming. so she really wants to bring those tourists back and also, create a lot more direct flight between sfo and also chinese major cities. and that's why she's talking to a lot of airlines business in china in terms of spending dollars, you know, chinese tourists, how what percentage of the spendings do they account for in terms of the tourism dollars? yeah. so prior to the pandemic, chinese tourists are actually the biggest contributor to local economy when it comes to the tourist industry. right. and i think it's slowly coming back since, last year. and also they predicted this year chinese

tourists will also becoming the biggest money spender in local tourism. i don't really have like a percentage or money number on top of my head right now, but yes, they are the largest group spending money here. >> all right. well, i understand her delegation will be coming back in a couple of days and no doubt all next week we'll be hearing about not just the pandas, but perhaps some of the economic deals. so, han, thank you so much for joining us. and good job with the reports. >> thank you. kristen >> coming up, a jury seated in the trial of former president trump as a man sets himself on fire outside. plus, rising pressure on president biden torn between helping an ally and winning young voters. we're getting answers on this busy day in the political world on me, brand new drip is what they see. >> it's time, it's time. it's on my teeth. brand new whip is what they see in my bag. >> like a bunch of groceries. all these cheese and greens just

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and just as jury selection wrapped up a horrific scene unfolded outside the manhattan criminal courthouse. a man set himself on fire in the park across the street after throwing anti-government pamphlets into the air. the new york fire department says his injuries are critical. a spokesperson for the court system says it won't impact the timeline of the former president's trial. donald trump is accused of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to adult film star stormy daniels ahead of the 2016 election. abc news chief washington correspondent jonathan karl joined us earlier to break it all down. hi, john. good to have you with us. hey thank you for having me. lots of developments today in the trump hush money trial. look. jonathan, some experts thought seating a jury could take weeks, but they did it in just four

days. is that surprisingly quick? >> it certainly surprised me. this came together really quickly, and it's quite a cross section of new york. if you look at the basic outlines of who this jury is, you've got your 12 jurors, your six alternates. the real message that i saw in all of this is that this judge, judge merchan, is, is very much focused on making this a speedy and quick trial and isn't going to put up with much delay efforts, which has been a real tactic of the trump legal team. >> all right. i want to look forward at the trial, but i want to look backwards just a little bit real quickly. what did experts think about this panel of 12 jurors and six alternates into something really interesting happened in the process of selecting them with regard to, you know, social media, anything else? >> well, i thought the most fascinating thing of this is, is donald trump was sitting there in the courtroom, compelled to be in the courtroom, and his legal team did very good due diligence research on every

prospective juror. so they brought up any social media postings that were remotely critical of donald trump and in several cases, these prospective jurors, including some of the jurors that were chosen, had to read out loud in court social media postings that they you know, things that they had said about donald trump. some of them you know, pretty tough, pretty critical, some of them positive, but a lot of them very critical. so you really had a window into who these jurors are. it seems like those that they, that they chose, you know, have all said that they can be impartial, and nobody is in there that has said anything blatantly either harsh, critical or overly positive about donald trump. in other words, right where you want to be. >> all right. so opening arguments, i understand correct me if i'm wrong on monday. right. and then what how long do we expect this to go? >> we think opening arguments on monday. we don't know for sure because there are some motions that still have to be debated

and ruled on. one is the question of if there is an interview with donald trump, if donald trump takes the stand, what will the defense i mean, sorry, what will the prosecution be able to introduce in doing the cross examination? because they will try to undermine trump's credibility. so there's a question of what they can, what they can say. so you have, you know, motions like that. but look, it's very possible that opening arguments start on monday. the expectation is that this trial would be about six weeks. it certainly could be a little bit longer. and based on how jury selection went, it might even be a little bit quicker. >> might be. all right. so what do you expect the defense tactic will be? what do you expect? trump will say or do given how he's behaved? you know, even during jury selection and prior, i think that the number one aim of donald trump's legal team is actually going to be to make sure that their client doesn't do anything in that courtroom that will hurt his case, you

know, he's already up against this partial, gag order, they want to make sure, in other words, that donald trump is restrained and well behaved, which is tough because he's going to be in there four days a week again, compelled to be there, not in control in the courtroom of what happens. he's not in charge. he's not the center of attention. so i think that's one key thing. the other thing they're going to do, look, is they're going to do everything they can to undermine the credibility of the central witnesses for the prosecution. first and foremost, that's michael cohen, the guy that actually made the payments, physically made the payments to stormy daniels. they're going to try to, you know, portray cohen as a convicted liar, which, frankly, he is. i mean, he did serve three years in prison, in part for lying under oath. so they're going to try to say, this is your major witness, this is the guy he is without any credibility once so ever. of course, it's not the easiest case to make when you consider that michael cohen worked for

about a decade for donald trump as one of his closest, you know, advisers, his fixer, his lawyer, and, of course, look, trump yesterday complained that he should be campaigning instead of doing this, not compelled to be there, posting on truth social, right, claiming he's being victimized. how does this play to his base? >> well, you know, he's he's been playing he's been making the case to his base now for over a year that he is a victim, that they're out to get him, that all these prosecutions, this prosecution and the federal prosecutions and what we saw in the state of georgia that this is, you know, the deep state, his enemies that are out to destroy him because they really want to go after trump's supporters. so he's going to lean into that really strongly, that look, this is a tough thing to be a presidential candidate. and to four days a week have to be sitting hour after hour in a courtroom in new york instead of campaigning. but the truth is that trump has actually not been

doing a lot of campaigning, he is had one of the light. i mean, the lightest campaign schedule i've ever seen for a major presidential candidate. so we'll see. i expect what he will do is every day he will use the time before and after court to come to the cameras and basically give his campaign message, which will be also done through truth social. and then wednesdays and on weekends he'll go out and do rallies, so he will be fully in campaign mode even as he is defending himself in a criminal case. >> let's talk about his opponent , of course, president biden and the wall street journal is reporting that the president is considering sending israel more than $1 billion worth of weapons. right? one of the largest arms transfers in the war so far. and before i ask you about that, i want to play a clip. this is of what a protester said. one of the pro palestinian protesters this week in the bay area. as you know, they closed down the golden gate bridge and on 8-80. here's what

they said about biden. >> i don't think there's anything i can say to biden that would make him listen, he's a terrible man. and, i will not be voting for him. >> can you talk about the consequence of the israel hamas continuing war on biden and how that makes it tricky for him politically? and then this particular one dollars billion, you know, arms transfer. >> it's really tricky for biden because you know biden look this is going to be a close election. i mean almost no matter what, no matter what even happens in the criminal cases, this is going to be a very close election. and if there are a significant number of democrats not necessarily in california, look, joe biden's going to win california. but if there are significant number of democrats in states like michigan and north carolina, wisconsin, the key battleground states who are saying that they believe that biden is complicit in what is happening in gaza and they are not going to vote for him. it's a major problem for biden and this, proposed or reportedly proposed arms

transfer of an additional billion dollars, much of it defensive weapons, to be sure, iron dome and the like. but certainly some of it, almost certainly some of it offensive weapons. it'll feed into that argument. so biden's in a little bit of a bind. he you know, israel is america's ally. he's been trying to steer bibi netanyahu's government into being, you know, more restrained in gaza to allow more humanitarian aid to come in to, to try to tell him to hold back response against, iran, but he's in a real bind here. it's both a national security bind, very real one, but also a political one. >> all right. you know, john, it's always great talking with you. we are out of time. so folks will have to tune in to you on the weekend to get the rest on what's going on with the ukraine foreign aid as well. right >> great. absolutely. and believe me, it's going to be a hell of a weekend. we've got big

votes, in the in the house on saturday right before we come on the air, sunday morning. >> all right. see you then. thanks, john. all right. you think you can name your child anything? but california actually has limits. what many families are forced to leave out

that's to what you can officially write on a birth certificate. currently, the law does not permit accent marks on official documents, not even when they're connected to cultural identities. but there's a new bill to try to change that in california. joining us live now is assembly member blanca pacheco from los angeles county, who sponsored the bill. assembly member pacheco, thanks for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> okay, so accents are not allowed, but apostrophes and hyphens are. explain to us what's going on and why the law is this way.

>> yes, you are correct. so currently here in the state of california, the diacritical marks are not allowed on vital records. and this happened back in 1986 when california became an english only language state. and thereafter diacritical marks weren't allowed on vital records. >> so what are some of the most common diacritical marks and in which cultures would this be most relevant? >> so interesting enough, there's just so many different cultures that use different diacritical marks. you have the cedilla, you have the tilde, you have umlauts, uh- and spanish. you have the ana. and it's very important to be able to write a name the way it's pronounced uh. for instance, munoz without the n it would be munoz. and so that's why this bill is so important are or like suenos dreams, right? >> being suenos without the

little mark. okay, so what would your bill say specifically? >> so my bill would say that in california, the uh- a person would be able to put diacritical marks on their child's name for instance, on a birth certificate. and it would be allowed for birth certificates, death certificates and marriage licenses. >> what do other states do? >> so there's different states that allow it in different states that don't allow it. and interestingly enough, there's quite a number of states here in the u.s. that do allow it. we have alaska, hawaii, kansas, north carolina, even texas allows it. >> i see. what have been the impacts that you've seen based on stories maybe people tell you on families, you know, who couldn't put down the marks that they really needed for their child's name? >> so interesting enough, this, bill came forward because of, a child whose name is nicholas.

and so writing it, the way it's spelled, it becomes nicholas. and so his family thought it was important for, his, his, their child, to have the name that they wanted and for it to be spelled correctly, because there is a difference between nicholas and nicholas. oh, absolutely. >> absolutely, i want to ask you if this is an obstacle, though potentially estimates from past legislative sessions put the cost of doing this at $2.5 million. is that money california can afford right now? >> well, actually, we have been working with, the, the county recorder's office, so that way there wouldn't be a cost associated to this. it's been tried before, but we've been working with different amendments being proposed. so that way we can implement implement it here in the state of california, for instance, there is also a delayed, time

frame as to when this bill would be implemented. so that way we can be better prepared. >> thank you. assemblywoman blanca pacheco, really appreciate your time. >> no, tha

>> david: tonight, breaking news in donald trump's criminal trial. the jury is now seated. who is the first witness? and the scare outside today. the man who set himself on fire. also tonight, the two united pilots suspended this eveni