live from our studio in singapore, this is bbc news it s newsday. hello and welcome to the programme. president biden has arrived in belfast for a four day trip to mark the 25th anniversary of the historic good friday agreement. the landmark deal largely brought to an end the 30 year conflict in northern ireland known as the troubles. president biden says he looks forward to reiterating america s commitment to preserving the peace. my colleague emma vardy has more. air force i arrives at belfast international and northern ireland s first presidential visit in ten years is under way. time for a short hello with rishi sunak on the tarmac before the president was whisked away for the night. a ring of steel is in place in belfast city centre in what is one of the biggest security operations here of recent years. we ve been planning for this for a number of weeks. we ve prepared for all the various contingencies. our style and tone that we ll be delivering around this policing o
welcome to the programme. we begin in beijing, where russia s president vladimir putin has just landed. he s set to meet his chinese counterpart xijinping later. it s mr putin s second trip to china in just over six months, perhaps underlining the importance to moscow of the relationship after the unprecedented sanctions it s facing as a result of the war in ukraine. nonetheless, the chinese government seems to be looking forward to the summit. china and russia regarding cover as comprehensive, critical and cooperative partners in the era and relationships have continued to develop healthily with leaders of the two countries maintaining close contacts. let s assess how close that relationship is. mr putin s trip to beijing is his first outside of russia since he was sworn in for a new six year term as president last week. the two leaders have met on a fairly frequent basis in the last few years and seem to get on quite well. in 2019 mr xi went to russia on a state visit, refe
as more than 50 of his mps call for a ceasefire in gaza. you re watching bbc news broadcasting to viewers in the uk and around the world. we begin in san francisco, where president biden says real progress has been made at a highly anticipated meeting with his chinese counterpart, on the sidelines of an asia pacific summit. xijinping described beijing s relationship with the us as the most important in the world. this isjust their second in person meeting since president biden assumed office. and during that time, relations have deteriorated significantly. we ll be live with our correspondent in san francisco shortly. but first this report from our north america editor sarah smith. with a warm, personal greeting, the leaders of the world s two most powerful countries look like they want to improve their relationship. simply getting together in the same room is a diplomatic statement when tensions between their nations are very high. i value our conversation because, i thi
carlo rovelli, welcome to hardtalk. thank you very much, stephen. i want to begin with a thought about your youth, because when you were young, you were a revolutionary. you wanted dramatic change, to destroy the status quo. i just wonder if you ve brought that spirit into your physics, into your study of the universe. yes. it was not.notjust me. it was a big chunk of my generation that had this dream of changing the world, right? and then making a world better without wars, without borders. we got disappointed. we sort of thought, well, the rest of the planet, the rest of the people doesn t really want to change the world so much. and i think it s a moment of disappointment that i found something else which was revolutionary, which was modern physics. so i shifted from political revolution to scientific revolution. and what sense can you describe physics as potentially revolutionary? because we have a worldview in which we think we know everything. right? this is up, this is