Israel carries out fresh strikes in Beirut

This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

The Signal Awards recognize the podcasts that define culture, and being honored by the Signal Awards sets your production team apart. With recognition from the industry's top experts, and access proof that your work is a standard bearer for podcasting worldwide. By entering, your work is heard by the Signal Awards Judging Academy, an invitation only.

Hi, I'm Zing Singh

And I'm Simon Jack.

And together we host Good Bad Billion.

The podcast exploring how some of the world's richest people made their fortunes. And we're back

ترجمة نانسي قنقر

Yep, global pop icon Beyonce.

To Steven Spielberg.

Football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo today. Just a few.

And as ever we're asking you Good, bad or just another.

That's good, bad bit. B B C World set.

Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London. I'm Tim Frank. All the signs are, as we come on air, that it may well be coming. A deal could well finally be signed by the US and Iran

So Tim, this happened a couple of hours ago and uh it's an attack that happened uh without any warning by the Israeli military. It hit a building uh in the Dahir district, which is the area where Hezbollah is based. in the southern suburbs of Beirut and the Israeli military described this building as a command centre being used by Hezbollah

Well I was gonna ask you, Hugo, I know that you're currently based in Beirut, but you spend a lot of time in uh Jerusalem. What is your understanding of the sort of pressure i internally that Binimin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, is under as as a result of possibly the war in Lebanon having to come to a close.

Yeah, it was very interesting this morning, you know, reading uh Israeli newspapers and the reaction, you know, that many of the newspapers had. uh was that this deal this you know possible deal we've seen only leaks of of the deal, we haven't seen, you know, the deal itself. But the reaction was that this was a catastrophe for Israel in one of uh the newspapers.

Yeah. Uga Bashaga in Beirut, thank you and uh apologies about the slightly scratchy quality of that line. Well as Zugo was saying, these attacks could well complicate, if not undermine, the immediate prospects of a deal between Iran and the US being hammered out today. Ali Vez is Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. What's his view?

This is important because it's either Prime Minister Netanyahu trying to undermine the agreement between Iran and the United States at the last minute. Or he's trying to basically weaken Hezbollah and degrade Hezbollah significantly before he gets another chance to do so maybe at some point down the road. In either case, it is not a very helpful approach.

What's your understanding or what's your best guess as to the other? how comprehensive this this memorandum might be, what it might comprise.

This is a page and a half uh long document. It's uh contains fourteen points. So by definition it is not a very comprehensive, detailed understanding. Uh what it does is that it brings the war to an end uh in a comprehensive manner at the regional level. It does start the process of reopening the Strait of Hormuz and also removing the US blockade of Iranian ports. And that's a positive development.

Just in terms of some sort of financial reprieve for Iran, are you saying that the MOU would not have an immediate bonus for Iran. But the the thought is that over the ensuing two months there would be some sort of promise. of money going to the regime i in some fashion.

The two sides have two very different narratives about it. Uh the Americans are saying that they're not giving Iran any money uh at this stage and payments would be progress payments that would happen down the road when Iran delivers on its commitments. The Iranians, however, are saying because of uh the lack of trust, they want upfront payment and they are going to receive it in the form of a line of credit from the regional country.

In terms of what will count as sufficient progress on the nuclear issue which would deliver satisfaction for both sides. I mean everybody's been saying it's partly about what happens to the highly enriched uranium that's uh already in Iran and it's also about how far enrichment of uranium needs to be halted inside Iran. Um i assuming that th those are the two big issues, can you see a sort of A position which could possibly satisfy both sides?

Um I can see the position. Uh it is negotiating it it's it's harder than uh saying the zone of possible agreement. Um so basically the Iranians have in the past accepted restrictions and uh transparency measures on their nuclear programme in return for economic incentives. So that I think they would be willing to do and given the fact that uh it is now almost exactly a year since the twelve day war uh in twenty twenty five when their nuclear program was bombed.

And that was Ali Vayez from the uh International Crisis Group. Switzerland holds lots of referendums. It's a big part of how this European country does democracy. But uh today's referendum i has been particularly intriguing because Swiss people were being asked to vote on whether they want to limit the country's population, cap it, at ten million. It was an initiative advanced by the Anti Immigration People's Party.

Well what we're looking at with some votes counted, some cantons results already through, is a rejection but a pretty narrow rejection, looking maybe fifty three, fifty four percent no And that kind of forty seven, forty eight percent yes. I would say we still have the big urban centres, Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Bern to come, where we would expect a bigger no vote.

You're right. I mean it's a very familiar debate. It was a rather unfamiliar sort of policy move that was being put forward. W uh tell me how this cap was supposed to work.

Well that's a really good question because it was one I was asking people throughout this campaign and it was really complicated a ten million cap on the population, a hard ceiling. What would happen to the ten millionth and first baby um that was born was one question that I asked. Nobody had an answer to that, nobody could really envisage that.

Free movement of people in inside the European.

Yes, that's right. Not in the EU, but has signed up to free movement so it can access the single market, which is uh really important. More than half of Swiss exports are sold into the EU.

And in terms of the argument from the Swiss People's Party, I mean I know the argument ag against was sort of you know uh uh precisely because of Switzerland's deal with the EU and and free movement of people that this you know, economically could be very harmful and that we need uh migrant labour and so so on and so forth. Well was the Swiss People's Party's argument was it mainly cultural or was it the sort of economic one about we we can't afford the pressure on our public services?

It's kind of both. I mean what you have to know is that Swiss voters are very familiar with the Swiss People's Party and its stance on immigration and its stance on on Europe, which are steadfastly negative. But this initiative. This proposal was dressed up as a sustainability initiative. That's what they called it. And they said look

Swissland.

Imogen folks, thank you very much.

New York has hit peak Knicks Mania. The wait is finally over with the Knicks winning their first NBA championship since 1973. And the streets are erupting.

I've been watching them since I was a kid. This means everything to me. I've been watching them for 25 straight years. They've been garbage. Finally, we've brought around.

I'm telling you right now, it's uh once in a generation. I'm happy to be here to witness it. I'll tell you that right now. Mix in five, you're never gonna see it again, mix.

Maybe.

It's historic.

Fifty-three years, that's crazy. Fifty-three years.

Yeah.

The Knicks won the best of seven series in five games that delivered excitement, anxiety, and iconic moments that will go down in history.

As will that uh short piece from Neditorfic uh turning it up to eleven. I love the fan who said he'd been watching the Knicks for more than twenty five years and they've been garbage. Uh and this first championship in more than fifty years came with another stunning comeback over the San Antonio Spurs to uh win the finals in the fifth game. Well we managed to secure our own small little triumph.

Fans of the New York Knicks are a long suffering bunch. They have watched as New York teams in other sports, like the Mets or the Yankees or even the New York Liberty, the women's basketball team.

It wasn't just that they've they've won it this time, uh it was also how they did it. I mean these extraordinary comebacks that they staged, it was I it's been sporting drama of the the h at the highest level, hasn't it?

Yes. The Knicks came into this series uh facing a lot of doubts. In the in the United States, we have the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference. And The Western Conference is full of teams like the Los Angeles Lakers that have a history of being dominant and competitive.

Ashley just one more question if I may. Um I I I I know there's been Some violence on the streets, some some of the sort of partying has got unruly um it seemed. Um but when it when it comes to the moment when the Knicks return um to New York and parade their trophy, I mean it's it's gonna be some party, isn't it?

Oh, it's gonna be amazing. The Knicks fans have always been a wild bunch. Even before this year, if you ever watch the watch parties outside of Madison Si Madison Square Garden, uh if you've seen the videos on apps like YouTube, they're always just just wild to the point of delirious. And to some degree you have to be that way when you're rooting for a team that is that has not uh taken gone far for the last thirty or so years, right?

Ashley Southall uh talking it up for the New York Knicks. Um she was speaking to us uh from the New York Times.

What are the chances, what are the challenges of answering an exam question when it's about a piece of work that you inspired? That was what confronted the fifteen year old son of the Irish poet Emily Cullen when he sat down for his English exam, opened the exam paper, and saw on the page a poem his mum had written about him years before, Branca Lesser Desar picks up the story.

Emily Cullen, a poet from Galway, had spent the morning helping her son cram in some revision for his afternoon English exam.

It was an ordinary day like every other, except with the tension of the state exam that morning and trying to do last minute revision of Shakespeare's

So when she met him afterwards, and he looked pleased, she assumed their work had paid off. Yes.

He had a big broad smile on his face and I thought, Oh that's good, he must have remembered his Shakespeare quotes.

But it wasn't Macbeth or Hamlet that had come up on fifteen year old Lee's paper. Instead, it was a poem written by Emily herself, about him.

said, You won't believe it, Mum, the poem you wrote about me came up in the paper and I said, What? And I said, the one about the chalk.

Envoy in chalk was written by Emily after she spotted something Lee had written in chalk on the pavement outside their home. He was eight years old and the message read The World is great. It was just what Emily needed.

To bring me back to reality and to remind me that things were in so bad and there was beauty all around me and lots of wonder in the

Every day.

The Pope

The poem was first published as an Irish Times poem of the week, before later appearing in Emily's third collection, Conditional Perfect, but seven years later she could never have imagined it would come up on her son's exam paper.

It was just the most flabbergasting moment. It felt like it was in another dimension.

Lee had also been in shock when he flipped open his exam and saw his mother's words. Initially, the coincidence posed the problem. Admit in his answer that the poem was about him, and Risk seeming delusional, or respond to it as he would any other text.

When he took a moment he thought, Well, the person grading my exam probably won't believe that I inspired the poem and that my mum wrote the poem about something that I chalked in the pavement So he he opted to respond to the question in the third person.

Once the exam was over, the emotions sunk in. Lee asked his mum to pick him up so he could tell her.

got quite emotional about it as you would, and m my breath was taken away really. I was just kind of in a state of pleasant shock.

Thank you.

Emily's life has changed considerably since she wrote Envoy and Chalk. Her own mother has since died, and she's now caring for her ninety five year old father, who recently returned home from hospital. The world is great, those words her son wrote on the pavement all those years ago. remain more important than ever.

We do have to kind of remind ourselves of the gift that life is and of the wonders all around us in abundance amid the darkness and the dark times.

For Emily, there is no better reminder of this wonder than having her own fifteen year old son answer an exam question on a poem she wrote inspired by him.

It's an amazing thing. I mean the what are the odds that that would happen? Yeah. It's kind of a once in a lifetime synchronicity really.

Emily Cullen, the Irish poet, uh ending that report by uh Branca Lesser de Saa. You're listening to Newshour. Much more to come in the next thirty minutes. Stay with us if you can.

The Signal Awards recognize the podcasts that define culture, and being honored by the Signal Awards sets your production team apart with recognition. The industry's top experts and access proof that your work is a standard bearer for podcasting worldwide. By entering your work is heard by the Signal Awards Judging Academy, an invitation-only body of podcasting.

Hi, I'm Zing Sing.

And I'm Simon Jack.

And together we host Good Bad Billionaire.

The podcast exploring how some of the world's richest people made their fortunes.

Back for a new season with a brand new lineup of billionaires.

Yep, global pop icon beyond.

Football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo tonight.

a few.

However, we're asking you to decide whether they're good, bad, or just another billy.

That's good bad business.

What do Beatles member Sir Paul McCartney?

YouTube Megastar Mr Beast. All being discussed in the new season of Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast which explores the lives and fortunes of the world's super rich.

That's good bad billionaire from the BBC World Service.

Listen now, search for Good Bad Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Welcome back to News Our British Armed Forces take control of an oil tanker in uh have taken control of an oil tanker in the Channel the Sea between England and France, an oil tanker which the British Prime Minister has said is part of Russia's shadow fleet as it's known. It's the first time

The Shadow Fleet is a collection of vessels that sail outside international shipping rules. Most of them, for example, lack a functioning accident insurance. Most of them also use flag registrations in countries that really have no business flagging vessels. Some even sail without valid flag registration. Most of them are also very old. So it's uh like having a steady stream of of rust buckets through UK waters and indeed the waters of of countries in in the Baltic Sea, for example.

And they're there to take sanctioned Russian oil around the world.

many of them transport uh Russian oil and uh the reason they do that is that there is a a Western price cap on Russian oil, which essentially prevents uh legally operating ships from transporting that oil. And Russia wants to transport oil above the price cap, so it has turned to this shadow fleet which as a result has ha has exploded, as it were, grown uh phenomenally in size.

Right. Is that overstating it or or is that a reasonable assessment?

Russia's main source of revenue is oil. From a Russian perspective, it's got to be oil above the price cap because that's that's how Russia makes a a profit, which is why it has turned to the shadow fleet. So without the shadow fleet Russia would be struggling mightily to fund its war against Ukraine, which is why this is such a a wicked problem and one that the Western governments have been trying to tackle.

Now um uh this is the first time that British forces have boarded a uh one of these vessels. I guess it has a certain symbolic significance, but I mean I presume this was a pretty expensive operation. for the British authorities to launch. I mean, is it sustainable for them to try to intercept these vessels in this way?

Presumably not all of them because there are around six hundred shadow vessels have been sanctioned by the UK and and other European countries and it would be impossible to to board and seize all of them. But the UK did say it was going to board uh some of the most egregious violators uh within the Shadow Fleet and and since then it hasn't done so and and there raises a question of why.

And that was Elizabeth Braugh, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Well the details of the abductions remain uh rather unclear at this point. Uh, although some details are uh emerging as uh as is being reported by several outlets here, um he was abducted with his wife and daughter of six years old. And uh this is of uh creating great concerns in the uh uh not only security community here in Haiti, but uh in the whole society.

Do we know who abducted him?

Um, it's unclear. Um some uh uh outlets, including the New York Times, have reported that it may have been uh gang leader Chris La, but that remains to be considered.

Okay. But the d the the view is is that it's I mean, a an operation like this is likely to have been carried out by one of these gangs that that do exert considerable control in in the capital.

Well the the reality of the uh of the the gang war here in in Haiti uh has been really pervasive to um uh in in the community and in the society for the better part of the last five years, where it took really a turn for the worse since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. Um, as it stands today, the gangs uh are essentially challenged in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince and are resorting uh as a result. uh to kidnappings in their power struggle uh in in in the capital.

So it it's the best guess and I realize that, you know, you you you're sort of fighting against a uh a tide of not a huge amount of information here. But is the best guess that th you know, th this man and his family were kidnapped in order to try and exert some sort of pressure on the authorities rather than necessarily for a a a ransom.

Well, i it i it's likely uh a combination of both a a kidnapping of opportunity and also uh likely uh also targeted. I I mean uh I personally know James Boyard, he's a security expert here. Uh in fact I've worked with him uh several times uh with uh various outlets. uh to have his pretty much opinion, educated opinion about uh the situation here. Uh so clearly if they've identified who he was, he became uh uh you know, a high price target uh for the game.

And tell me uh I mean I th obviously trying to reassert some sort of control in Port au Prince and across the country is is absolutely key um for the authorities. Wha what is the latest on that? Because I mean from what I understand, um troops from Chad were supposed to arrive pr pretty recently to try and beef up security. W where is that heading right now?

Uh well um as of uh November of twenty twenty two, um uh the Haitian government had formally requested international support to fight the gangs. And um over essentially the last four years, there's been a lot of back and forth. But eventually the Security Council of the U United Nations is um approved Of what they call the multinational security support mission, uh, which uh was uh led initially, well, was led by Kenya for about a year.

Harold Isaac, uh freelance journalist in Porto Prince, thank you very much for joining us.

It's one of the questions of our time. How are we going to deal with the technological revolution that is heading our way, particularly when it comes to work? This was the man of the moment, Elon Musk, as of this week, the world's first trillionaire, speaking back in twenty twenty three about the future of employment.

No job is needed. You can have a job if you want to have a job for

Sort of personal

satisfaction, but the AI will be able to do everything.

But the question we're going to look at is not a question of whether artificial intelligence can or soon will be able to affect or even take over our jobs, but whether it ought It's something our next guest has been wrestling with. Sarah O'Connor is a journalist and columnist with the Financial Times, and she's just written a new book called We Are Not Machines The Fight for the Future of Work.

What did she learn?

What I learned is that actually when AI kind of enters a workplace or enters someone's job Often it doesn't just sweep them away entirely. Um I didn't meet anyone really who had been completely cast out of their work because of AI, but that it does transform the nature of of work and the quality of work, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.

So that I mean that was the promise of artificial intelligence, at least from the sort of the the tech titans who are who are piloting it. w which was and maybe it's always been the case with technological revolutions is that, you know, we will liberate humans from the sort of the boring stuff, the dangerous stuff. And also, you know, we will be able to deliver stuff much more cheaply and and much more quickly. How how far has that promise been been realised?

Well what I started to realise when I met some of the people on this journey was that in fact what they were telling me was that the precise opposite was happening. So rather than being freed up of the boring bits of their work in order to do things that feel more creative or more fulfilling.

But it is

Still sort of quite profoundly repetitive and boring and what the workers told me was it's actually become even lonelier because now you're just standing there and it's just you and the robot. And the work's just coming to you. You can't sort of have a chat with people along the way. And so they felt that they were becoming more robotic.

But also I mean and you make this point that you get to the point and it's quite difficult to argue against this point where i it's not Can AI do my job? But can AI do my job to a point where You know, either my employer is going to be happy um in what what AI is doing, either w with my job in in full or in part. Oh and is the customer gonna be happy? And so I guess the question is how far a workers retain any any agency over the role that AI?

I agree that that's definitely a risk and one of the things that came through very clearly was that actually, in spite of all of these promises about how machines are soon going to be better at than humans at absolutely everything. that's definitely not the case. I mean, in those examples I just gave you, the humans are still there because the machines are not yet as good as them. So they're still having to plug various inadequacies that the machines have.

And that and that's one of the very interesting things about the book is that very much it's you talking to people whose in a sense whose lives have already been intensely affected by artificial intelligence. And I think one of the ways in which we I mean certainly I as a journalist often talk about artificial intelligence is to think about

The way technology actually changes the world of work or indeed, you know, any of our areas of our life is that yes, there's what the technology can do, but then that is shaped by what institutions are in place. What regulations are in place? What does commu consumer demand want and not want? What do we reject? What do we decide we actually we hate that and we're not going to pay money for?

So we're not destined I mean it's always been the sort of the fear of when people have talked about new technology for ages, not just AI, but that we are gonna sort of end up as the tools of our tools. That that's that's not inevitable.

It's very much a real danger, but I don't think it's inevitable. And I think in order to make sure that it doesn't happen, we all have to sort of wake up to the fact that this is beginning to happen and that we do have a say over.

Sarah O'Connor, uh author of We Are Not Machines The Fight for the Future of Work, it's a fascinating book. Um that's it from this edition of NewsAur. From me, Tim Pranks, and the team here in London. Thanks for your company.

The Signal Awards recognize the podcasts that define culture, and being honored by the Signal Awards sets your production team apart with recognition. The industry's top experts and acts as proof that your work is a standard bearer for podcasting worldwide. By entering your work is heard by the Signal Awards Judging Academy, an invitation-only body of podcasting. Podcast professionals from acclaimed organizations to