republicans have criticised president biden over the amount of time it took to shoot down a chinese observation balloon that flew across the united states. china has said shooting down the balloon was an obvious over reaction. the diplomatic fall out is continuing, as warships try to recover the debris. secretary of state antony blinken was due to be in beijing this week, but he cancelled the trip after the balloon was discovered. barbara plett usher reports from beijing. for days, this solitary object floated serenely through us airspace, putting a diplomatic crisis onto television screens in real time. was it a harmless weather balloon, as the chinese claimed, or a spy in the sky? moments after it arrived over the atlantic, the us brought an explosive end to the drama. that trail of white vapour you see on the left of the screen is an american fighterjet heading for the balloon. the second vapour trail is from a heat seeking missile fired from the jet, easily finding its ta
immune to the venom of hatred to achieve the peace and prosperity that have eluded them through years of bloody ethnic conflicts. more news at the top of the hour. now it s time for political thinking with nick robinson. his guest this week as mary bousted, one of the teaching union leaders. hello and welcome to political thinking. it was another week when children and parents had to wait anxiously for an early morning text or an email to tell them whether their classroom or their school would open that day. thanks not to covid 19, not to a big dump of snow, but to strike action by members of the national education union this week on political thinking, a conversation with rather than an interrogation of someone in the news, my guest is the joint general secretary of that union, the neu, mary bousted. she is notjust the general secretary of the largest education union in europe, she has been a leader of a trade union for longer than almost anybody else in the country. she w
nursing leaders in england have made a direct appeal to rishi sunak, saying an improved pay offer could be enough to stop strikes, scheduled for monday and tuesday. now it s time for the new space race. 50 years ago, astronauts would regularly go to the moon. back then, many thought it wouldn t be long before people lived there. now, finally, that could be happening. we re notjust settling for doing the same old, same old. we want to push further. and rocket launches are now commonplace, sending up spacecraft for the benefit of life on earth. space is an integral part of society. our way of working only functions with satellites for telecom, for navigation, for earth observation, for weather forecasting, for many things. so we need these satellites for our daily life. the country that first sent a person into space is crashing back to earth because of its war in ukraine. if russia doesn t partner up with another nation or field its own space station, which given the current c
to implement her tax cutting agenda. police investigating the disappearance of nicola bulley in lancashire say they ve spoken to a woman they d described as a key witness. ms bulley was last seen nine days ago. nursing leaders in england have made a direct appeal to rishi sunak, saying an improved pay offer could be enough to stop strikes, scheduled for monday and tuesday. you re watching bbc news. now it s time for click. this week. as we re working towards the metaverse, we re at interpol to see how they re planning to keep it safe. we look at new software that s helping doctors perform delicate brain surgery. lara s throwing her weight around again. watch it! i ve got super strength. yes, that s definitely more powerful. and get ready to feel old. i never thought in my 205 i d be romanticising technology from when i was 13. over the last 20 or so years, we ve seen how difficult the internet and the web has been to police. it s bigger than any one country, and you can base