crime has caused and knife crime has caused widespread anger, particularly from local campaigners. a young local campaigners. ayoung girl local campaigners. a young girl has just been shot on the corner there, would you leave your house, would you be afraid? of course you'd be afraid. my thing is the government wasting money and not focusing on what's really needed out there, which is why this keeps happening. so far there have been no arrests but tributes for tanesha continued to grow, another life lost on the streets of london. adina campbell, bbc news, in tottenham. the duke of edinburgh, who's 96, has been admitted to hospital in central london for a hip operation. in a statement, buckingham palace said the procedure had been planned and would take place tomorrow at the king edward vii hospital. the duke has missed several recent royal events, as our royal correspondent daniela relph reports. police officers at the entrance — the sign that there is a royal patient behind the doors of the private king edward vii hospital in central london. the duke of edinburgh was driven here this afternoon ahead of hip surgery tomorrow. there have been few public appearances from

the duke in recent months. last summer, he retired from public life. his final official engagement, inspecting the royal marine on parade at buckingham palace. since then, when he has been seen in public, he's generally looked fit and well. here, a brisk walk to church at sandringham on christmas day. and even though his hip problems have been bothering him for around a month, he was seen in early march carriage driving, still a favourite past at 96 years old. but any surgery at this age comes with risk. there are certain technical risks, but the good news is the risks are rare and in fact, the outcomes are very good, it's a very reliable way of improving people's pain and function. i think a gentleman of mid—90s, clearly there are some anaesthetic

concerns but i have no doubt that the duke of edinburgh will be well cared for in that regard. the duke would usually join the queen and other members of the royal family for the traditional service at windsor on easter sunday. his absence at the weekend, a clear sign that the hip problem had become more difficult. the queen will remain at windsor but is being kept informed of her husband's condition. the labour leaderjeremy corbyn has beeen accused of provoking members of the jewish community by attending an event run last night byjewdas, a left—wing jewish group. mainstream jewish organisations said mr corbyn‘s presence at a dinner in london called into question his promise to tackle anti—semitism in the labour party. but mr corbyn said he'd learnt a lot at the event by talking to young people about their experiences, as our political correspondent ben wright reports. do you regret going to the event last night? not in the slightest. in politics, every choice matters, decisions send a signal, and jeremy corbyn‘s choice to join a passover event last night organised by a left—wing jewish group has angered others in the broaderjewish community.

but out campaigning in swindon today, the labour leader defended his attendance at the dinner. i spent the evening listening to them, talking to them about their experiences in modern britain. the issues of anti—semitism, which is a cancer and awful in our society and has to be eradicated wherever it raises its head. ifound it an interesting evening, hearing different points of view, because if you want to lead, you also have to listen. the dinner was a public event organised by jewdas, a left—wing, largely young, radicaljewish group critical of mainstream jewish organisations and the actions of israel. last week, when the labour leadership was engulfed in a row about anti—semitism in the party, jewdas said the furore shame on you!

jeremy corbyn has yet to meet the major jewish groups who protested about anti—semitism within labour last week, this evening, he wrote to them, asking for urgent discussions. it looks to us again, yet again, that his actions are not the same as his words. so we're wondering just how much reliance we can place on his word, when he says to us he's going to be an ally in the fight against anti—semitism. whateverjeremy corbyn‘s motivation for attending the dinner, it has done much to inflame tensions between the labour leadership and much of thejewish community, again, at a time when labour's desperate to show it's taking anti—semitism seriously, and now the grassroots group momentum that has done so much to build upjeremy corbyn‘s support

says that anti—semitism and what it calls conspiratorial thinking has to be tackled within labour. well, i think we have to accept it as a collective failure, you know? we haven't dealt with this issue as fast or as transparently as possible, and you know, cases have taken a great deal of time to be dealt with, investigations take time. i think we haven't had proper training programmes. thank you! mr corbyn‘s promise to stamp out anti—semitism in the labour party will be judged by his actions on this hugely charged and sensitive issue. ben wright, bbc news, westminster. rail workers in france have started three months of industrial action, severely affecting services across the country. the national rail company sncf said that travellers faced severe disruption, with some services running 20% of scheduled trains.

airline staff, refuse collectors, and some energy workers have also staged walkouts in protest at president macron‘s plans to reform public services, including fewer employment benefits for new recruits, as our correspondent lucy williamson reports. to predict theirfuture, france's rail workers are turning back to the past. they took their message to the commuters themselves. the president is trying to break the power of the unions and the government's reforms, the first step to privatisation. macron promised to transfer or france and many voters believe this is necessary but these strikers are not appealing to its economic aid but its social heart. france's

social model is what makes us friends. it's an argument that worked before. the test is whether the country will back them. with all —— almost half the rail company's core staff on strike, just one in five regional trains were running. platforms were so crowded, one woman fell onto the tracks at gare de lyon. passengers jumped down fell onto the tracks at gare de lyon. passengersjumped down to haul her up. translation: i am sick and tired of it. they have the right to strike but not to jeopardise our jobs. a stand-off with the rail unions may not do president macron any harm when he is facing competition for right—wing votes but success competition for right—wing votes but success will depend on whether public sector workers will join success will depend on whether public sector workers willjoin the strike. having been elected to change france, president macron is gambling that france has changed. new medical centres to speed up the diagnosis of cancer are being introduced

across england to try to spot the disease at an earlier earlier. the stragegy is to avoid the situation where patients are referred for separate tests for different forms of the illness when they have non—specific symptoms. the former health secretary, lord lansley, who's being treated for bowel cancer, is calling for improvements to the screening programme, as our health editor hugh pym reports. helped me focus more on what actually my symptoms were. patients with unexplained symptoms can get sent around different places for tests if their doctors think they might have cancer, but now a one—stop shop trial aims to bring everything together on single sites. the aim being to get the diagnosis or the all clear within 28 days. the advantages are that the patients can have all the tests that need doing in one place rather than having to go back and forth to different departments. and the quicker we can get the diagnosis of cancer

for a patient and start the treatment, it means better outcomes for the patients. but survival rates in britain for all cancers are lagging behind some other leading economies. sweden, germany and france are among those with the highest rates, ahead of england, wales and scotland. bowel cancer is the second biggest cancer killer. lord lansley, the former conservative health secretary who has bowel cancer, says a screening scheme should have been offered across england by 2016 but it still only available in half the country. he blames lack of investment in staff for the programme called scope screening, which uses a camera to examine the patient‘s lower bowel. the aim is early detection of any abnormalities. this hospital, saint marks in north west london, was one of the first in the country to start offering the bowel screening programme to 55—year—olds. and it's now available to every eligible patient in the local community. but in other parts of england, the service is a lot more patchy. staff shortages affecting nhs cancer care have been highlighted in the bbc‘s hospital series,

with one surgeon in nottingham revealing his frustration. the job that i want to can't do in the nhs, because the pressure we're under all the time. there's just nowhere to take a breath. cancer survival rates are improving, but with people living longer, the caseload is increasing. the challenge for the nhs is to keep up with that. police have arrested two men on suspicion of planning acts of terror. loud bangs were heard as counter terror officers forced their way into two addresses in dewsbury in west yorkshire. police said that the two men, aged 52 and 21, were arrested and detained at a police station in west yorkshire for questioning. two homes were searched in connection with the ongoing investigation. the head of the uk's military research centre, which has been carrying out tests after the salisbury nerve agent attack, has said scientists are 100 per cent sure that the substance but speaking to the bbc, gary aitkenhead, said it was not

the role of experts at porton down to identify where the nerve agent came from. in the past few hours, russia's president vladimir putin has said he hopes a line can be drawn under the poisoning of sergei and yulia skripal last month. let's hear what the head of porton down has been saying, as he also sought to reassure the public. we know through the scientific analysis that we've done with world—class experts in this area that we are 100% certain that this is from the novichok family of nerve agents, a military grade nerve agent. we provided that information to the police and to the government, and that's really been our role in this. it's not for us to advise on who made the nerve agent or where indeed it came from. yeah, we feel like we have found all of the traces across salisbury,

that those areas have been secured, that anybody that may have been infected would certainly know about that by now. and so therefore, we feel like the ongoing risk to public health now is fairly low. live to san bruno — and here from senior police officers about the youtube incident. we will give you a full update tomorrow morning. we don't anticipate there will be great changes tonight. i sure well. i was just talking. is everyone here? good. so i want to give you... thank you, doctor. iwant good. so i want to give you... thank you, doctor. i want to give you the

conditions of the patients we've received from the incident that you tube headquarters in san bruno. —— youtube. we have received a total of three patients and do not expect additional. two females and one male. the females are ages 32. that patient is in serious condition. we have a 27—year—old female infection dish. and we have a 36 thereof male who is in critical condition. as i said, we do not —— expect additional patients. i will give you further updates tonight if there are significant updates to be given. if not, i will give your full tomorrow morning. the san bruno police

department in partnership with you tube are setting up a family reunification centre. and you can contact the san bruno police department for information. i would like to introduce you to doctor at andre campbell was been a trauma surgeon andre campbell was been a trauma surgeon here at zuckerberg san francisco general. he is going to discuss with you the types of interest —— injuries we have seen and the effects of those injuries. good afternoon. my name is doctor andre campbell. i'm a trauma surgeon here at the zuckerberg san francisco general hospital. 0nce here at the zuckerberg san francisco general hospital. once again we are confronted with a mash casualties situation in san francisco with

three victims we have taken care of. this is unfortunate and it continues. you would think that after we have seen las vegas, parkland, the pulse nightclub shooting, you would think we have seen shooting, you would think we have seen an shooting, you would think we have seen an end to it but we have not. zuckerberg san francisco general hospital is the only level one trauma centre in san francisco and it means we receive all the victims get injured in these victims came from just south of san francisco but we stand ready 21r— from just south of san francisco but we stand ready 2li— seven to take ca re of we stand ready 2li— seven to take care of anyone who is injured, whether it is from gunshot wounds, falls, car accidents, whether it is from gunshot wounds, falls, caraccidents, bikes or other things we do regularly at the zuckerberg san francisco general hospital so what happened was, we we re hospital so what happened was, we were activated and when we get activated, with a mash casualties situation, all the doctors and nurses and therapists come down and we do an assessment. “—

nurses and therapists come down and we do an assessment. —— mass casualties. where are able to deal with all the patients and we diagnose them, treat them and make sure they get appropriate care. i can't tell you specific injuries, but i can tell you one thing, when people are shot, either in the extremities or in the shots, they have significant injuries. we've seen have significant injuries. we've seen injuries from handguns, ak—li7s, ar 155, those aren't those today as far as we know but what happens is when they get shot it creates a major crisis, what happens is we have to be activated and care for them. the trauma system starts with them. the trauma system starts with the care that patients received in the care that patients received in the field from our dedicated paramedics, they bring the patience to us after police have secured the scene, which they did. then they come in and we do an assessment working with the trauma surgeons, the eid physicians and the nurses, we all get together and do what is right for the patients. we go

through things from top to bottom, making sure we diagnose injuries and we ta ke making sure we diagnose injuries and we take care of them and that's what we take care of them and that's what we do at the zuckerberg san francisco general hospital. doctor andre campbell speaking outside the hospital, three casualties are being treated in san francisco, two women, one, 33, is serious, the other, in a fair condition, 27, and a 36—year—old male, whose condition is described as critical. those other three casualties in hospital, a fourth is dead at the scene, that's the woman believed to have been firing shots. more details on that in our next news, which is newsday, at midnight tonight but now, before that, time tojoin at midnight tonight but now, before that, time to join stephen sackur for this week's addition of hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. this programme, like so many

others, in the churn of 24/7 news, tends to focus on the people and places facing problems and challenges and more often than not we hold the powerful to account for things that went wrong, not right. are we missing the bigger picture about the world we live in? my guest today, the psychologist and writer steven pinker, certainly thinks so. his new book, enlightenment now, is a focus on human progress driven by reason and science. just how convincing are his reasons to be cheerful? steven pinker, welcome to hardtalk.

thank you. this idea of the enlightenment is very dear to your heart. briefly, if you will, capture for me what you mean by the enlightenment? it refers to the intellectual movement in the second half of the 18th—century. it put a premium on reason as opposed to authority, tradition, dogma, charisma, on science, on the attempt to explain the world by testing hypotheses and on humanism, on the wellbeing of individual humans as the ultimate good as opposed to the glory of the nation or the tribe, or perpetuation of the faith. and a movement borne out of european thought but is it your proposition that it captures universal values? european and also american, but i guess that's an offshoot of europe. although every idea has

to come from somewhere, so it is european in that sense, but it is based on reason which humans are universally capable and it's based on universal human interests. everyone wants a long life, everyone wants to be healthy, almost everyone wants knowledge and education. people would prefer to live in safety rather than in danger, all things being equal. science and reason have, i think it's fair to say, underpinned so much of human thought and human scientific and technological developments in recent centuries but is it your feeling that this enlightenment is under threat? it absolutely is and in fact it has been since it was formulated. the counter—enlightenment of the 19th century arose very quickly after the enlightenment. the romantic movement, the glorification of blood and soil, romantic militarism, the idea that the individual is merely a cell in a super organism, consisting of their nation

or their race or their ethnic group. and we are seeing a resurgence of counter—enlightenment thinking in authoritarian populism, in trumpism in the united states, in the populous movements in eastern europe. by saying that, you are sort of suggesting that trumpism in the unite states is, what, as far as you are concerned, and utterly illogical, counter—productive political movement? i so would argue that it is counter—productive, indeed. although, talking about the intellectual roots of trumpism sounds like a bit of an oxymoron but in fact it does have a pedigree. he was advised by people like stephen bannon and steve miller and michael anton who consider themselves intellectuals, who are influenced by a counter—enlightenment tradition and you can see some of the themes of trumpism, such as that there's an inherent virtue in a particular people, and that whose soul is embodied in a strong leader, who needn't be

encumbered by the milestone of an administrative state, which it voices their goodness directly. these are themes that run through counter—enlightenment. it would seem to me that donald trump's politics is a politics driven by emotion, driven by an appeal to a person's gut instincts rather than necessarily their rational brain. and he connects. the skill of donald trump is that, unlike many of his political rivals, he found and continues to find a way to connect with a very significant part of the american population. indeed and certainly emotional impulses such as tribalism, such as authoritarianism, that is vesting power in a charismatic leader, reasoning by anecdote rather than by facts and data — that is the compelling story about the american who is mowed down by an illegal immigrant breaking a traffic law — this is an appeal to our not so rational side... but if trump isn't an aberration,

he is not a bleep, he is part of a long line of politicians that, while you would say the last few centuries have been a triumph of science and reason, many would say the last few centuries have absolutely shown us that the human species is often driven by gut instinct, by emotion and by feelings that are not anything to do with science or reason. indeed. in fact, one of the misconceptions about enlightenment thinkers is they assumed we are all rational. that we're all like mr spock from the original star trek. but enlightenment thinkers like hume, like spinoza, like adam smith, like the american founders, they were avid students of human nature and they were all

too aware of human flaws and they proposed norms and institutions that were work arounds for our darker impulses so those impulses are always with us and at various times in history they do predominate. but if i understand your most recent book, enlightenment now, correctly, you are saying that we need to understand that we as human beings have never had it so good and that in terms of statistics on world hunger, on poverty, on loss of life to warfare, that really things are rather wonderful on our planet today and that is not the way many people in both the developed and developing worlds actually see and experience of the world? that is right. as long as tragedy and problems have not been reduced to zero, there will always be enough of them to fill the news and since our sense of risk and probability is driven

by anecdotes and images and narratives rather than by data, unless we actually see the data, we can miss the fantastic progress that has been made. not uniformly, progress isn't magic... we cannot surely dismiss half of all syrians, that is 12 million people, being displaced on their homes, many hundreds of thousands killed. we cannot dismiss that as some sort of unimportant bleep in the data. absolutely not but we do have to realize that, because of our rising moral standards, we care more about people than our ancestors did so things can can often look worse even though we're more compassionate... how can you measure compassion? how can you be sure we are more compassionate — this generation in the early 21st century, than any other humans? you're right, i do not have data on compassion but, if you look at just the way events are described and categorised, people forget that there were greater number of displacements during the bangladesh war of independence, during the partition of india, the korean war had far more

casualties than the war in syria. this is not to minimise the horrific suffering of the syrian people but the imperative to recognise the suffering of people in earlier eras and to realise that we're not stuck with the amount of suffering that we see. just as earlier generations reduced the amount of warfare — not to zero — but we can eliminate the wars that are taking place now. it emboldens us with the realisation that these are not utopian aspirations, that displaced people and wars and refugees can be reduced. i come back to the point that most people on this earth do not think the way that you do, partly because they are not trained in the way that you have been trained, but also you are driven by — your book is full of it — by big data, meta data and you crunch the numbers

and you take a very sort of high overview of the way the world works. most folks do not do that. they relate to their own experience and their own perception. ijust wonder how much value there is in you telling us all that we should be more cheerful, we should be more positive and optimistic about the human condition, when it does not match reality for most of us? that is why we have education, that's why we have persuasion, that's why we have discourse, that's why we have debate. in order to counter our intuitions and our impulses which are often highly misleading. that's one of the great lesson of psychology in the second—half of the 20th century. a lot of our intuitions are systematically biased. something that can be amplified... but you have bias also, don't you? we all do. you are the product of your nurture just as i am of mine and any body else in this world, watching on tv or listening on the radio

is of theirs. when people today express doubt about expertise and they sometimes say, "you know what, you can prove almost anything with statistics," they have a point, don't they? no, you cannot prove almost any thing with statistics, at least not if you do it honest but who is to define honest? this is one of those perpetuating spirals of argument because in the end we all make choices — you make choices about the data you put into your numbercrunching computers, you decide what particular facet of the human condition to profile, these are all subjective. then you challenge me and observers get to hear the various sides and they can see who has the most persuasive case. the fact that science has progressed shows that, despite human disagreements, despite the fact that all of us are blinded by our own biases, over the long run, with free speech, with open debate, with the ability to challenge people, with the onus to provide data to support your beliefs, over the long run, we can approach understanding and explanation and truth. no question i think that everybody

would agree that data on global hunger and poverty eradication does suggests that, for most people in the world, in that very material sense, things are better today than they have ever been, for most people but, if you take the most advanced society, the united states, your idea of progress runs into real trouble because for generations the middle class in the united states of america has seen their living standards stagnate and, in some years, actually decline. and there is a feeling when you look at the polls, and americans say that, by a clear majority, for years they have felt their country to be on the wrong track, that in the most advanced society in the world,

your theory of the eternal march to progress has been thwarted. forget eternal march to progress — not eternal, not a march. eco progress. problems are inevitable. we solve them as they arise. on average, we make progress but it is not some inexorable force. the us is a peculiar case because even though people think of it as the prototypical advanced western democracy, in many ways the us is an outlier, a laggard among western democracies... you cannot have an outlier that is the most important and powerful economy in the world. it sets a standard and it is in many ways a country that the rest of the world looks to and if the message from the united states is that the values you espouse, the science, the reason, the humanism can take you so far but then things start to go wrong, then that is a message that is important to the entire world. it is an unfortunate message and the united states is in many ways a backward country compared to it's western peers. the united states has higher measures of crime, of child mortality,

ogf maternal mortality, lower lifespans, greater drug use, more abortions. it doesn't meet any measure of social pathology. it is ahead of most countries of the world. but behind most of the countries in western europe and the anglosphere... why and how does it fit into your theory? the united states is an ambivalent enlightenment country

because though its constitution was perhaps the most famous product of the enlightenment, and the declaration of independence, and its founders — mathison, jefferson, adams, were men of the enlightenment — in many ways the country itself has been divided. it's almost been two countries. there is an enlightenment country, there is also a more traditional culture of honour, more heavily represented in the south than the west, in which the ethic is that, instead you having disinterested institutions that meet outjustice and secure social welfare, it is up to the individual defending himself and his family by the justifiable use of violence if necessary and a lot of american politics has always struggled between the culture of honour and culture of enlightenment. so it's a peculiar example of a western democracy. you didn't like my phrase, "the eternal march of progress" and see why but it does strike me that there is a tendency toward triumphalism or hubris in your theory in that you know what you believe to be the most important values to humanity today, they are those born out of the enlightenment, and you seem to be convinced that, as long as we continue to adhere to them, we are on, frankly, a one—way ticket to better times. francis fukuyama, the historian, looked at what happened

after the fall of the berlin wall in the triumph of sort of capitalism and markets over communism and he concluded that we could celebrate the end of history. and i just wonder whether there is the same sort of danger that you're declaring the triumph of a particular set of intellectual values, when those values, whether it be from russia or china or elsewhere, are being challenged in a concerted and important and significant way. they certainly are being challenged, that's why i would not allude to an inexorable march of progress. it's not a mysticalforce. the end of history was a brilliant bit of marketing. well, up to a point. up to a point. that's true. it's now a millstone that hangs around francis fu kuyama's neck. in defence of fukuyama, the number of democracies has increased since the end of history was published. and yet freedom house, when it studies democracies every year, says that over the last 12 years more countries have experienced a regression in their democratic values than those that have experienced an advanced. freedom house is one of the more pessimistic measures of democracy. freedom house is also an activist

organisation and activist organisations are always biased towards a crying crisis and other indicators of democracies. so there's certainly been a deceleration. but freedom house has a somewhat alarmist picture. when you think about it, in our youth we both had 31 democracies in the early 19705, half of europe was behind the iron curtain. there was barely a democracy in latin america. taiwan and the philippines, indonesia, greece was a military dictatorship, spain and portugal were under the control of fascism. it's true that there has been a push back in countries like russia, turkey, poland and venezuela. but still the overall trend continuing through the end of history has been towards democratisation.

in your world view, is religion nothing more than an aberration when it enters the realm of public policy and governance? well, it's certainly... theistic belief, belief in a god who can wreak miracles, that's something that should be kept out of politics, yes. in the united states we have the separation of church and state, and i think this is an excellent principle, yes. we should not base policy on miracles. do you think you have too rosy a view of human nature? oh, i'm well—equipped to deny that charge. i wrote a book called the blank slate: the modern denial of human nature in which i make probably the strongest case that's been made in a popular book that human nature is saddled with flaws such as dominance, egocentrism, revenge, magical thinking and so on. i am the last person that can be accused of having too rosy a view of human nature. but i do think human nature is a complex system and together with our darker impulses, there are, and i hear i stole the phrase from abraham lincoln, the better angels of our nature, sides of human nature

such as reason, such as empathy, such as self—control, such as moral norms that are in constant tension with our darker sides and it's up to our institutions and our norms to empower our better angels, the parts of human nature that over the long run can lead to institutions that tame our inner demons. your academic discipline is psychology rather than history, for example. i want to quote to you something that perhaps puts an historical sense of perspective onto your thinking about the enlightenment, it comes from a commentator here in the uk responding to your book, jenni russell, she says, "every civilisation has believed in its in vulnerability until it actually falls." she says, "from the greeks to the romans, the mongols, the ming dynasty, each failed because it couldn't grasp its own flaws or the threats to it until it was too late."

"and pinker‘s blindspot is believing that the appeal of liberal democritus sees and the enlightenment values that underpin to be accepted." yeah, no. if anything i would identify the blindspot among people who confuse the existence of progress with some force toward inevitability or indestructibility. people are so unused to even conceiving of the fact of progress that they can't distinguish a factual claim, like things are better than they were several decades ago, or several centuries ago, with these mystical notions of vulnerability or inexorable marches. they're not the same thing. you can acknowledge that we live longer without saying that we live in a utopia, that we're going to live forever. what about science, you are a scientist of a sort, but if one looks your claims for technology and science and the degree to which they continue to deliver us to a better

place, one can quite quickly counter with obviously climate change, being a massive global problem which science, for the moment, seems incapable of coming up with a clear solution. one could look at the degradation of our environments, particularly the oceans and microplastics right now. one could say that your faith in science looks misplaced. all of the facts you mentioned of course are scientific discoveries, and so without science... they're discoveries of the harm science is doing. that's what technology has done. the way to deal with them is to understand what caused them and what can reverse them. that's why you have to marry human ingenuity and science and human motivation and science. right now we don't appear to have the motivation to undertake the massive international cooperative effort to tackle these problems of technology. we do, not enough, but we do.

the paris climate accord certainly shows the world, again with one conspicuous exception, can come to an agreement. the exception is pretty darned important. although remember that the pushing back on our president, and by the way we cannot withdraw from the accord for another three years anyway, by which time it's possible president trump will be a lame duck and his successor will reinstate the american participation, but individual states, individual corporations, the rest of the world and the rest of the world of course can push back against the united states if it violates the paris agreement by putting tariffs on american goods based on their carbon emissions. so the acts of one president won't necessarily undo the progress, although they might. when you talk like that i'm just reminded that the historian mal ferguson said at times he is reminded of doctor pangaloss when he listens to you. doctor pangaloss. ..

that's a mistake because pangaloss was a pessimist. he said, "we live in the best of all possible worlds." someone who believes in human progress believes the world can be a much better place than we have now. you're much more optimistic than doctor pangaloss? pangaloss was a defender of theodicy, the belief that god was incapable of making the world any better than the way we find it today. so just go back to climate change, we are not on track to solving the problem of climate change, there's no doubt. i'm not an optimist in the sense that everything will all work out. we're almost out of time but in essence you almost are. here's my invitation to you at the end of this programme, some people today look at where we are with climate change, for example, or indeed with nuclear proliferation, and in particular the nuclear stand—off right now with donald trump's united states administration and north korea, and they think to themselves, we've probably never been closer to seeing existential threats to humanity come to reality, but your worldview

would suggest we have it within us always to avert those sorts of existential threats? i think there's an imperative to see our way through to avoiding the existential threats, to treating these as problems to be solved, not to declare that we're doomed so we may as well enjoy life while we can, but to put the pressure where it has to be placed for there to be changes of policies, changes of administration, so we mitigate the severest threats. and your life, your experience suggests to you that there is every good reason to continue to believe human beings will get to where they need to be? well, not that there's every reason but there is a reason, not that it's inevitable, who knows what the probabilities are, but that it is possible and therefore there is the imperative to take the steps that have the greatest chance of solving the problems.

we have to end there but steven pinker, thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. thanks for having me. thank you very much. quite a day on the weipa some of us on wednesday. lots of heavy showers around as well. thunder and lightning, potentially as well and some of these downpours will bring hail to one or two places as well but the chances are that some of us mightjust but the chances are that some of us might just about to but the chances are that some of us mightjust about to miss the heavy showers as well. this is what we got through the early hours, showers at this stage but in scotland, the remnants of

that cold weather we had over easter. the low pressure barrels in across the uk drink also wednesday. the chances are that this thing in the morning, some of us will look at the morning, some of us will look at the sky, blue and beautiful and wonder where the showers are but they will be on their way. the afternoon will be worse across england and wales. scotland first. the far north—west, sonny. snow across the highlands. sleet in the lowlands. some smoke the northern ireland but the rest of the country, blobs of blue showing heavy showers with hail and thunder with gusty winds around. a bit cloud coming out around with those heavy showers. low pressure a cross around with those heavy showers. low pressure across scandinavia. another low pressure behind me trying to creep in but we are in between those weather systems. 0r because the morning will be quite chilly and

thursday to friday, the weather changes yet again. the high—pressure pulls away to the east. 0ut west, we have a weather front. rain and wind. cornwall, devon, wales, some rain. but some of the central and eastern areas will have brighter weather and it might warm up to around 16 or 17 celsius. the weather will be all over the place for the next few days. goodbye. i'm babita sharma in london. the headlines: three people are injured after a shooting at the youtube headquarters in california. officers in counter numerous employees fleeing from the building. it was very chaotic, as you can imagine —— encountered. workers have been

led from the scene. the shooter is believed to have killed herself. we'll have the latest live from san francisco. i'm sharanjit leyl in singapore. also in the programme: reunited after 24 years. the incredible story of family's search that's captivated china and the world. the images that reveal how drones are helping in the fight to save endangered species.