welcome to this special year ending edition of hardtalk with me, stephen sackur. it s our chance to look back on some of the most telling and compelling encounters of 2023. how will this past year be remembered? well, a grim new phase in an intractable conflict will loom large. on october the 7th, hamas the islamist group which controls gaza and is proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the uk and the us launched a murderous attack on southern israel. 1,200 israelis were killed. israel s response was a ferocious assault on gaza, now in its third month, which has already inflicted tens of thousands of palestinian casualties. we cannot guarantee 100% safety for the people in gaza who will be around hamas militants. and that s why i keep saying, move out, move out from those neighbourhoods, because we are coming to hunt down hamas and we will do whatever is necessary from the air, from the sea, from the land. we will get to those people and we will kill them. you cannot d
michael cohen s cell phone, if you look sad and he can t copy, and he can t transcribed notes. they re really trying to minimize how much of this can leak into the public ahead of the trial. and we all remember that donald trump does pose things on his social media, particularly when he is displeased with an investigation. so how do we get here to the point where the judge felt the need to do this? so this was all from the prosecutors. if you remember at the arraignment they brought up trump s post, because all leading up to the charges he was criticizing the district attorney alvin bragg. he was putting out some pretty inflammatory posts. and even then he was criticizing the judge in this case. so the prosecutor said look, you keep saying all the stuff on social media, can we reign this cnn? the judge was very even-handed. he said i ve been telling both sides prosecution you control your witnesses, defense you control your client, don t put anything on social media that
well, my guest is seychelles president, wavel ramkalawan. is this a story of paradise lost? president wavel ramkalawan, welcome to hardtalk. thank you very much. well, it s a pleasure to have you in the studio. you in the seychelles are known at the un as one of the sids nations. that s the small island developing states. do you think the world listens properly to the sids? i would say no. in fact, as an african country, when the world talks about africa, they don t really pay attention to the sids. and yet, the sids of africa are the ones that are doing very well. when you look at the mo ibrahim index, for example, mauritius is first, seychelles is second, cape verde s third. so you have three sids that are doing extremely well, but the focus is on mainland africa. but isn t that, in a sense, part of the point? you are doing relatively well. i believe your per capita income is over $10,000, which in african terms is pretty remarkable, and you re very small. your population
well, my guest is seychelles president, wavel ramkalawan. is this a story of paradise lost? president wavel ramkalawan, welcome to hardtalk. thank you very much. well, it s a pleasure to have you in the studio. you in the seychelles are known at the un as one of the sids nations. that s the small island developing states. do you think the world listens properly to the sids? i would say no. in fact, as an african country, when the world talks about africa, they don t really pay attention to the sids. and yet, the sids of africa are the ones that are doing very well. when you look at the mo ibrahim index, for example, mauritius is first, seychelles is second, cape verde s third. so you have three sids that are doing extremely well, but the focus is on mainland africa. but isn t that, in a sense, part of the point? you are doing relatively well. i believe your per capita income is over $10,000, which in african terms is pretty remarkable, and you re very small. your population