Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Friday, February 10th. I'm Nailibutu.

Today, President Biden takes control of the debt ceiling narrative, plus sports betting

at the Super Bowl. But first, today's one big thing, getting aid to Turkey and Syria

as the earthquake death toll keeps climbing.

The death toll from the quake in its aftershocks in Syria and Turkey surpassed 20,000 on Thursday.

The scale of the destruction and freezing temperatures are hampering rescue efforts.

But the first UN humanitarian aid convoy did enter Northwest Syria yesterday.

Axios World Editor, Lauren Whitney Gottbreath, is back with the latest forest,

High-Learn Whitney. Hi, Nailibutu. Can you put in context to us how this compares

to other recent natural disasters, the scope of this? Sure. I mean,

obviously every natural disaster is incredibly tragic. But I think this one in particular has

some unique aspects that are making getting aid and humanitarian workers to sort of the epicentre

where they need to be to help people a lot harder. First, governments that are trying to send aid,

they have to deal with both Turkey and Syria. Obviously, a lot of Western countries have great

relations with Turkey. Turkey is part of the NATO alliance, so that hasn't been as difficult.

The big issue is really in northern Syria, particularly in opposition-held areas.

There's only one border crossing from Turkey into this part of Syria.

As you mentioned, it was only recently that aid was able to start going via that border crossing.

That was because the road leading to that border crossing Turkey was highly damaged by the earthquake

itself. So that's part of the problem. And then secondly, any aid that a country might want to

send via Damascus, the Syrian government and Assad regime will control what goes to opposition

areas and what doesn't. So I think there's a lot of fear, particularly in sort of the humanitarian

...