French transcript

And James is turning our attentions to the international press.

Yes, indeed.

Hello.

Good morning, Hannah. So we're gonna start off with an article

in Haaretz, a

left-leaning daily in Israel, with a surprising piece of information for

us this

morning. Well, it was actually in the last 24 hours,

but anyway, is an Israeli

rabbi has said that honeypot sex is kosher for female

Mossad agents. Now, just to unpack that headline- ...

basically what they're saying is that, you know, he has given his blessing to

female agents of the Israeli secret service to, uh,

I suppose, who are required to have sex with the

enemy, uh, in so-called honey trap

missions against terrorists. So I suppose usually it wouldn't be

allowed to be

getting up to those sort of antics-

Uh-huh

... outside of, you know, a traditional wedding as, as, you know,

rabbis would see

it, I, I, I'd imagine. But, uh, there's a special dispensation for this,

uh,

for when it comes to national security, and this was written in a, a

study called Illicit Sex for the Sake of National Security, uh,

for the Tzomet Institute, which looks at the interface between

religion and

modernity.

Who knew it was such a big issue?

Well, there you go. And apparently it goes back to biblical

times-

Oh

... according to this rabbi, because Queen Esther slept with the

Persian King

Xerxes, I'm not sure if that's pronounced correctly,

around 500 BC to save her

people. So if she did it, then mod- the modern day- ... spy can do it as well.

Okay.

Now-

You've all got the green light.

Exactly. Now, moving across the border to, uh, Lebanon, L'Orient-Le Jour

is reporting on, um, is, is carrying a report by the Hudson

Institute in New York.

Now, they're saying that Hezbollah, the southern, uh, Shiite, uh,

Lebanese, uh, I suppose, organization, uh, is planning an

insurrection in the country. Now, things have been somewhat calmer in recent

times,

but basically they're saying it's in Hezbollah's interest and it's in Iran's

interest to ratchet up tension in the Middle East. Now, uh, it's...

They're saying Iranian president Mahmoud A- Ahmadinejad's planned visit to

Lebanon must be seen in this light, in the context of a plot by Hezbollah,

uh, to extend its control over the entire

country.

And according to the Hudson Institute, Hezbollah has even deployed in several

sensitive zones around Lebanon with a view to toppling the government.

So you heard it here first.

Okay. There you go.

Well, perhaps not here first, but, uh, they're really saying that things are not

looking too good in the short term for Lebanon.

Now, moving on to a completely different story,

much less serious, the

Hindustan Times, they're looking at cracking the coconut

conundrum.

Now, to explain that, there, there, there are 15 billion coconuts

grown and exported, well, maybe not all of them,

exported every year in India.

It's worth 11 billion pounds in British,

uh, I suppose, currency-

That's a lot

... to, uh, the Indian economy. Massive industry.

The thing is, it in- depends almost entirely on people climbing

up these trees

with their bare legs and arms.

Mm.

Now, if we have a look at the Independent in

the UK, they have some photos of that.

And the reason it's in the spotlight is that the local government in the, the

state of Kerala has come up with a competition to try to figure

out, you know, a robot or a machine of some description to do the

work instead of

human labor, because the thing is, as Indians get more educated, fewer

and fewer

want to climb up coconut trees, uh, I suppose, to make a living.

So this isn't about doing them out of a job or anything?

No, it isn't.

Okay.

Indeed, there's a 15% shortfall at the moment in

labor, so they need to figure out

some sort of way to harvest the coconuts.

Okay.

And apparently it's a very difficult job.

Uh, you can only do it for maybe two hours at

a stretch, according to one guy.

You, you f- get awful pains and aches on your tendons.

Why can't they just get a le- ladder?

Well, I don't know. It's, perhaps-

Maybe they're too high?

I think it's too high.

Okay.

And so what they're trying to devi- devise now is various plans.

Is, whether it be a rope and a levee or a sort of a robot that'll climb up the

tree

and cut it down. 450 different entrants for this

competition, and the

prize is 1 million rupees, which isn't maybe quite as much as it

sounds.

It's about 16,000 euros. So, and there's-

Not bad though.

Not bad at all, and, uh, indeed, the son of one of, uh, a, a lot of

family members of people who've done this job for years and years have tried to

come up with ideas themselves, so that's a two-day competition starting

today.

Uh, so there you go. And we'll move on to The Guardian.

Uh, Sights Unseen, Exotic Animals Discovered.

Now, this is mainly for the photos they've

taken, this particular piece.

This is four out of many different new animals that have been discovered by

Conservation International, an NGO.

So starting in the top left corner there-

Okay

... you've got a tube-nosed fruit bat.

And believe it or not, uh, that, that's from Papua New Guinea.

And on the bottom right, you've got another tube no-

nosed fruit bat.

Ooh, and they look so different.

So apparently they look completely different.

And the one on the bottom right is from Vietnam.

And, uh, the, up on the top right, you've got a pink-eyed caetatiia,

also from

Papua New Guinea. And on the bottom left, a large, bright green frog.

So I just thought, you know, striking photos worth taking perhaps for

the press

review. So do we have time for one last article?

I'm not sure. Okay.

Well, also in The Guardian, there was an interesting report from Guangzhou,

which

is a southern Chinese city. Now, it's perhaps not known, but, uh, there are

hundreds of thousands of African immigrants drawn to the south of China

every

year. A lot of them go there because they can't

get visas for Europe, and it's an

increasing destination for, uh, African immigrants-

Mm-hmm

... in particular from Nigeria. And so a lot of them end up here.

But since the Olympics actually, there's been a big crackdown on

immigration in,

uh, this zone. Visas were renewed very easily,

short-term visas.

That's no longer the case, and many of these Nigerians

and Africans are c- are

complaining about very bad treatment from the authorities.

They're being chased down in their homes, on the streets, in buses.

And because the African community is largely an immigrant community,

they're very

conspicuous and easy to, I suppose, pick out by the police.

So, uh, you know, they're, they're saying that often they're held for

21 days.

If they can't pay a f- pay a fine or if they can't afford a plane trip home,

they're, they're often held for longer.

So it looks like there's quite bad treatment of them.

But there is a, the kind of the other side of the story

also in the article.

They're saying that a lot of them here, bec- they end up here because they can't

get visas to Europe.

Mm-hmm.

And in fact, they think they're better treated here in,

in China than in Europe.

Uh, one guy, uh, Eric Rufito, pictured at the bottom I think of the

article, says,

"In China, we live like in Africa. You have a bottle,

you share it with others.

In Europe, they do not share the bottle." So that's

his notion.

So I suppose it's interesting to look at immigration from a non-European

perspective.

A different perspective, absolutely.

So there you go. That's the papers this morning.

All right, James. Thank you very much indeed. Uh, that

is today's press review.