Babak Belurs

Minggu, 06 September 2020

Birmingham stabbings: 'Strong response' to manhunt CCTV - BBC News

Police hunting a man suspected of killing one person and injuring seven others in stabbings across Birmingham city centre say they have had a "strong response" after releasing CCTV footage.

The attacks in the early hours of Sunday sparked a massive manhunt.

Images of the man officers want to find were published on Sunday evening.

Detectives have been working through the night following leads from the public to identify and find the suspect, West Midlands Police tweeted.

The attacks happened at four different locations across the city centre during a 90-minute spell.

A 23-year-old man was killed in Irving Street at 01:50 BST on Sunday, while a man and a woman, aged 19 and 32, suffered critical stabbing injuries.

Five other people, aged between 23 and 33, were injured and taken to hospital. Two have since been discharged.

CCTV footage released on Sunday evening shows a man wearing a baseball cap, a dark hoodie with white drawstrings, dark-coloured trousers and shoes.

He is seen standing and walking on a street corner.

Three hours after the images were published, West Midlands Police tweeted: "We've had a strong response following our appeal to trace the #BirminghamStabbings suspect.

"Our detectives are following up several new lines of enquiry. This man is wanted on suspicion of murder.

"We've got a team of detectives working through the night to identify and trace the suspect."

It added that a special hotline has been set up for members of the public to pass on information.

Earlier in the day, Ch Supt Steve Graham told reporters: "At this stage we believe that the attacks were random and we have no indication of a motive."

He urged the public to remain vigilant, and call 999 if they spotted anything suspicious.

'Impact on the city'

West Midlands Police were first called to Constitution Hill where a man sustained a superficial injury just after 00:30 BST.

Twenty minutes later they were called to Livery Street, near to Snow Hill railway station, where the 19-year-old man was critically injured and a woman was also hurt.

An hour later at 01:50 BST, police were sent to Irving Street, where the 23-year-old died and another man suffered serious injuries.

Ten minutes later, they were called to Hurst Street, in the city's Gay Village, where the 32-year-old woman was critically injured and two men suffered lesser injuries.

The stabbings do not appear to be terrorism related or gang related, police said.

Mr Graham added: "We do not underestimate the impact that these incidents have had on the city of Birmingham.

"We declared this a major incident at the earliest opportunity and we have drafted in scores of officers to help with the investigation and patrol the city to reassure residents and visitors that we are doing all we can to apprehend the person responsible."

Multiple witnesses saw the attacks, including Nikita Denton who was out celebrating her 29th birthday and helped stop one of the women bleeding in the street.

Restaurant owner Savvas Sfrantzis described seeing the "cold" attacker walk calmly away after stabbing a woman repeatedly.

"I looked at him, facing him, and I can see he had a blade, not very big, and he was stabbing her in the neck.

"He wasn't panicking and he wasn't reacting or anything. After he stabbed her between five and seven times... he walked off as if nothing has happened."

Officers have recovered a knife from a drain but Mr Graham said it was "way too early" to say if it was connected to the case.

When asked how the knifeman was able go for more than two hours without being caught, he described the suspect's route through the city was "relatively unusual".

He added: "There was no suggestion people had seen him running out, area searches were being made at the time, unfortunately the subject wasn't caught."

The force's police and crime commissioner David Jamieson labelled the assaults "disturbing", with the violence unfolding as revellers had been enjoying the night.

West Midlands Police said extras officers had "flooded" the city centre and forensic experts had examined four scenes.

A heavy police presence remained throughout Sunday, with armed officers, patrols, riot vans and squad cars visible.

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2020-09-07 03:55:56Z
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Brexit: Boris Johnson planning to override key parts of EU withdrawal agreement - report - Sky News

Boris Johnson is reportedly drawing up new legislation that will override the Brexit withdrawal agreement on Northern Ireland - a move that risks the collapse of trade negotiations with the European Union.

The Financial Times reports that sections of the Internal Market Bill, due to be published on Wednesday, are expected to "eliminate the legal force of parts of the withdrawal agreement" in areas including Northern Ireland customs and state aid.

A source told the FT that the move could "clearly and consciously" undermine the agreement on Northern Ireland that the prime minister signed last October to avoid a return to a hard border with the Irish Republic.

Asked about the report, a government spokeswoman said it was working to "protect Northern Ireland's place in our United Kingdom".

Raab MP — Raab: Brexit deal 'there for the taking'

"We are working hard to resolve outstanding issues with the Northern Ireland Protocol through the Joint Committee and will continue to approach these discussions in good faith," she said.

"As a responsible government, we are considering fall back options in the event this is not achieved to ensure the communities of Northern Ireland are protected."

The suggestion that ministers could possibly undermine an international treaty and use Northern Ireland as a bargaining chip has been condemned by parties on both sides of the Irish border.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, who played a key role in negotiating the withdrawal agreement and Northern Ireland Protocol, tweeted "this would be a very unwise way to proceed".

Labour shadow Northern Ireland secretary Louise Haigh said: "It beggars belief that the government is - yet again - playing a dangerous game in Northern Ireland and sacrificing our international standing at the altar of the prime minister's incompetence."

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: "If true, this means repudiation by UK govt of a Treaty freely negotiated by it, & described by PM in GE as an 'oven ready' deal. This will significantly increase likelihood of no deal, and the resulting damage to the economy will be entirely Tory inflicted. What charlatans."

The EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, believes Brexit trade deal 'unlikely'

The move comes as Britain and the EU resume talks on a trade deal, with Mr Johnson telling the EU that a free trade deal must be done by 15 October, otherwise the UK will "move on".

The prime minister said Britain was entering the "final phase" of negotiations, which resume on Tuesday.

"There is no sense in thinking about timelines that go beyond that point," he said.

"The EU have been very clear about the timetable. I am too. There needs to be an agreement with our European friends by the time of the European Council on 15 October if it's going to be in force by the end of the year.

"So there is no sense in thinking about timelines that go beyond that point. If we can't agree by then, then I do not see that there will be a free trade agreement between us, and we should both accept that and move on."

:: Listen to Sophy Ridge on Sunday on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker

The EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, is due to touch down in London to meet his UK counterpart Lord David Frost.

Lord Frost said that Theresa May's administration had "blinked and had its bluff called" in previous talks and vowed not to compromise on Britain's desire to be independent.

The prime minister said if a deal cannot be struck they would trade in a similar way to that of Australia, which does not have a comprehensive trade agreement with the EU.

Much of EU-Australia trade follows default World Trade Organisation rules, though specific agreements are in place for certain goods.

If a deal can be struck, it would be based on a standard free trade agreement like the one the EU has agreed with Canada, Mr Johnson said.

"Even at this late stage, if the EU are ready to rethink their current positions and agree this I will be delighted. But we cannot and will not compromise on the fundamentals of what it means to be an independent country to get it."

preview image — Sophy Ridge talks to Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab

Analysis: History tells us that Brexit deadlines can often backfire
By Nick Martin, people and politics correspondent

Rather than see this as a pressure tactic, it's likely the EU will welcome the deadline set by the prime minister.

Since the coronavirus pandemic, negotiations have been slower than expected and a short deadline could help to focus the minds of all those involved.

Europe could welcome anything that turbo-charges negotiations.

If the two big issues remaining on the table could be trashed out by mid-October, it would give the remaining EU member states time to give a free-trade agreement the seal of approval by the end of the year.

That would mean a deal could be done.

But a word of warning: history tells us that Brexit deadlines can often backfire; many have come and gone.

Mr Johnson will hope this time it's different.

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2020-09-07 03:35:37Z
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DOMINIC LAWSON: Free speech, fake science - and why we must take the fight to the climate zealots - Daily Mail

DOMINIC LAWSON: Free speech, fake science - and why we must take the fight to the climate zealots

By Dominic Lawson for the Daily Mail

Published: 02:24 BST, 7 September 2020 | Updated: 03:21 BST, 7 September 2020

As I write this column, I do so without knowing if all those who regularly purchase the Daily Mail from their newsagents will be allowed to buy the edition in which it appears.

That infringement of their — your — liberty is the purpose of Extinction Rebellion, a small-ish but increasingly influential group of middle-class climate change protesters who want to silence anyone or any organisation that doesn't share their hysterical view that the planet and its inhabitants will fry to fossil-fuelled extinction within a decade or two unless we return immediately to a form of pre-industrial subsistence.

That, ostensibly, is why they had been blockading the print sites of most of our national newspapers.

Their belief is not based on science but is quasi-religious: they regard any provider of information which does not conform to their strictures as wicked and to be silenced (if they refuse to be converted), rather in the same way that the Spanish Inquisition treated heretics.

Extinction Rebellion are pictured blockading Newsprinters in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, on Friday night using vehicles and bamboo lock-ons to try to prevent newspapers from reaching newsstands on Saturday

One of its founders and still an active member, Roger Hallam, went even further, declaring that 'maybe we should put a bullet in the head' as 'punishment' for those he deems responsible for this alleged impending planetary extinction.

Intimidate

Although it was the bulk of the newspaper industry that his group has been attempting to intimidate and shut down this weekend, last year it tried something similar with the BBC, massing outside New Broadcasting House, preventing many of the corporation's journalists from getting in, while holding up banners with the slogan 'BBC, your silence is deadly'.

In fact it is Extinction Rebellion which wishes to silence voices it disapproves of; and it was almost comical that it should have targeted the national broadcaster, which has itself taken the decision not to allow airtime to anyone who questions the idea that man-made climate change is the biggest global threat to human health (although the coronavirus pandemic might have caused some inside that organisation to wonder belatedly whether in fact disease might be the true villain).

Sir David Attenborough, still vigorous well into his 90s, is the cutting edge of that BBC campaign. He has declared that 'we cannot be radical enough' in our policies to reduce CO2 emissions.

Andrew Neil (left), during XR's tedious onslaught last year on those attempting to get to work in London, interviewed the movement's then spokeswoman, Zion Lights (right). Neil asked her to give the scientific basis for her claims that 'our children are going to die in the next ten to 20 years'

It is even more fabulously ironic that the issue of The Sun newspaper which the Extinction Rebellion blockaders on Friday night fought to prevent reaching the public contained an adoring interview with Sir David about 'the climate crisis'.

In it, he told his interviewer: 'We are damaging the environment just by sitting here breathing. The carbon dioxide going out of this window as a consequence of meeting here is quite significant.'

I would have been tempted to reply: 'Don't be silly, Sir David; it isn't.' But the nation's favourite presenter of once ideology-free wildlife documentaries was, as always, treated with uncritical deference.

In a way, the same unwillingness to debate has been both the media's — and the politicians' — approach to Extinction Rebellion and its spiritual leader, the precocious Swede Greta Thunberg.

More from Dominic Lawson for the Daily Mail...

Yes, the Press is now defending itself robustly against XR's physical attempts to silence it, yet there has been a peculiar reluctance to challenge the protest group's claims forensically. Peculiar, because it is not just that their methods are objectionable: so are their arguments.

Perhaps the only time this happened (at least on the BBC) was when Andrew Neil, during XR's tedious onslaught last year on those attempting to get to work in London, interviewed the movement's then spokeswoman, Zion Lights.

Neil asked her to give the scientific basis for her claims that 'our children are going to die in the next ten to 20 years'. After some confused waffle, she responded: 'The overall issue is that the deaths are going to happen' — which did not get us much further.

She seemed even more at a loss when Neil responded to her insistence that 'billions of people will die [as a result of climate change] over the next few decades': 'I looked through the report of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and there is no reference to anything of the sort.'

Alas, the BBC have since parted company with Mr Neil, whose critical approach to this matter is not their house style.

As for Ms Lights, she has since left XR … to become an advocate of nuclear power.

Delusion

In a brave article, she said that she had become aware that this country (or any other developed nation) could not abandon fossil fuels and still keep the lights on without rapid development of nuclear power — the only reliable way of mass-producing energy without emitting CO2.

Bjorn Lomborg's latest book, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts The Poor, And Fails To Fix The Planet, has been almost entirely ignored in the British media (forget about any BBC interviews with Lomborg)

No amount of wind or solar energy installations can produce energy 24 hours a day, or in absolutely reliable quantities: they are inherently intermittent in their production.

As the late chief scientific adviser to the Government, Professor Sir David MacKay, said a week before he died in 2016: 'Because my time is thinner and thinner, I should call a spade a spade…

'There is this appalling delusion people have that we can take this thing [renewables] and we can just scale it up, and if there is a slight issue of it not adding up, then we can just do energy efficiency. Humanity really does need to pay attention to arithmetic and the laws of physics.'

Yet the XR lot regard nuclear power as satanic, not just because of its former connection with weapons production, but also because they shun anything which doesn't seem to them 'natural'.

One of Extinction Rebellion's founders and a continued member, Roger Hallam declared 'maybe we should put a bullet in the head' as 'punishment' for those he deems responsible for this alleged impending planetary extinction

It seems they would rather mankind died of hunger naturally, than prospered through technological and industrial processes. Or, rather, they take prosperity for granted, without understanding how it was created (perhaps because the great majority of them seem to come from homes which have never known poverty).

Yet our politicians seem cut from the same cloth. When Greta Thunberg came to the UK in April last year, they queued up to praise her and her arguments, which are indistinguishable from those of XR.

Speaking alongside her in parliament, the then Environment Secretary Michael Gove said: 'We have not done nearly enough. Greta, you have been heard.'

Scared

Indeed, two months later, the Government legislated to make the UK 'net zero carbon by 2050' — admittedly 25 years later than XR's impossible demand. But it had no idea how much this would cost, or how it would be done.

When Greta Thunberg (second from right) came to the UK in April last year, politicians including Michael Gove (far left) queued up to praise her and her arguments, which are indistinguishable from those of XR

The New Zealand government did carry out such an exercise, and concluded that to achieve 'net zero' by 2050 would cost 16 per cent of GDP annually. This would equate to £560 billion a year if applied to the UK — equivalent to almost three-quarters of all public expenditure.

Yet this legislation was passed without even a debate, let alone a vote in the House of Commons: it was enacted through a statutory instrument. This could only happen because the overwhelming majority of MPs are too scared to be seen as so-called 'climate change deniers'.

And they absolutely refuse to engage with such rigorous thinkers as Bjorn Lomborg, the president of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre think-tank, or Michael Shellenberger (named as a 'hero of the environment' by Time Magazine in 2008), both of whom argue that grotesquely excessive resources are being ineffectually dedicated to 'preventing' climate change.

So Bjorn Lomborg's latest book, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts The Poor, And Fails To Fix The Planet, has been almost entirely ignored in the British media (forget about any BBC interviews with Lomborg).

And I believe the Daily Mail is the only British newspaper which has given much space to Shellenberger's new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All — perhaps the most pertinent of his points being that to move to 100 per cent renewables 'would require increasing the proportion of land used for energy from today's 0.5 per cent to 50 per cent'.

The fact that the British political establishment — and the bulk of the media — have ceased even to engage in this debate, on an intellectual level, has left the ground free for Extinction Rebellion to occupy. Really, they didn't need to try to silence the Press. The intimidation and groupthink has done its work quite thoroughly already.

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2020-09-07 01:24:16Z
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Birmingham stabbings: 'Strong response' to manhunt CCTV - BBC News