Six In The Morning Friday 15 October 2021

 

Sir David Amess: Conservative MP stabbed to death

Conservative MP Sir David Amess has died after being stabbed at his constituency surgery in Essex.

Police said a 25-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of murder after the attack at a church in Leigh-on-Sea.

They said they recovered a knife and were not looking for anyone else in connection with the incident.

Sir David, 69, had been an MP since 1983 and was married with five children.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said he was "a great man, a great friend, and a great MP, killed while fulfilling his democratic role".

Poland criticised over stranded migrants after seventh death at border

Identity documents suggest latest person to die was 24-year-old Syrian who arrived in Belarus last month

Jon Henley

@jonhenley

Fri 15 Oct 2021 15.01 BST

Polish police have found another body near the border with Belarus amid fresh allegations that Warsaw is breaking international law in its treatment of migrants stranded in harrowing conditions on the EU’s eastern frontier.

The man’s body was spotted in a field by a helicopter crew, police said, bringing to seven the number of people reported by Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian and Belarusian authorities to have died trying to cross the border since the summer.

Identity documents found on the body indicate that the man was a 24-year-old Syrian, a local police spokesperson said, adding that a date stamp on a visa suggested he first arrived in Belarus in mid-September.

'The Billion Dollar Code': The battle over Google Earth

Netflix's new miniseries fictionalizes the story of two Berlin internet pioneers who attempt to prove that Google stole their idea, worth billions.

Two guys in Berlin in the early 1990s: One of them is an art student with big ideas, the other a computer nerd.

After meeting in 1993 in a techno club, they developed together the idea of creating a kind of global work of art that would allow people to travel to any point in the world, simply by zooming into a location with a click of the mouse.

Lebanon holds day of mourning after deadly sectarian clashes

Schools, banks and government offices across Lebanon shut down Friday after hours of gun battles between heavily armed militias killed six people and terrorised the residents of Beirut.

The government called for a day of mourning following the armed clashes, in which gunmen used automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades on the streets of the capital, echoing the nation’s darkest era of the 1975-90 civil war. The gun battles raised the specter of a return to sectarian violence in a country already struggling through one of the world’s worst economic crises of the past 150 years.

The violence broke out Thursday at a protest organised by the two main Shiite parties - Hezbollah and the Amal Movement - calling for the removal of the lead judge investigating last year’s massive explosion at Beirut port. Many of the protesters had been armed. It was not clear who fired the first shot, but the confrontation quickly devolved into heavy exchanges of gunfire along a former civil war frontline separating predominantly Muslim and Christian areas of Beirut

Guatemala’s growing palm oil industry fuels Indigenous land fight

The Guatemalan palm oil industry, world’s six largest, faces resistance from Indigenous people demanding land rights.

By Sandra Cuffe

15 Oct 2021

 Anibal Agurtia blows into the conch shell tied to a red string around his hand, calling people to the clearing.

Already, a few dozen members of the Indigenous Maya Q’eqchi’ community of Chinebal have gathered to discuss an escalating land struggle in this remote area of eastern Guatemala.

Community members accuse a Guatemalan company of planting oil palm on their traditional lands, and they have built homes to reclaim the disputed tract – spurring an eviction notice, several police operations, and a day of deadly violence that remains ever-present in the memory of the settlement’s more than 500 residents.

January 6 committee exposes a dark truth in going after Bannon

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

Updated 1244 GMT (2044 HKT) October 15, 2021

The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection is sending an aggressive message to Donald Trump's onetime political guru -- and to the former President himself.

But by moving forward to hold Steve Bannon, the architect of Trump's nationalist populism, in criminal contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena, the panel may be providing the mastermind of Trump's blow-it-all-up strategy yet another platform to try to tear down America's institutions.

Action that will unfold next week against the ex-President's ideological soul mate is intended as a warning sign to those in Trump's wider orbit. And the chairman of the January 6 committee, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, warned on CNN that no one is "off limits" in terms of being compelled to testify -- including Trump himself.