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tv   Our World  BBC News  October 17, 2020 4:30am-5:01am BST

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this is bbc news, the headlines: president macron of france has paid tribute to a teacher beheaded by a knifeman in a suburb of paris, saying he was killed for advocating freedom of expression. he called him a victim of an islamist terror attack and declared that deception and violence would not win. armenian missiles have again struck azerbaijan's second city, ganja, as fighting continues over nagorno—karabakh. video footage shows people searching for survivors in the rubble of a residential block. an azeri official said at least ten civilians were killed. friday saw an azeri attack on nagorno karabakh's main city, stepa na kert. britain's prime minister borisjohnson has said the country should prepare for ending the brexit transition period without a trade deal at the end of this year. he said this could only be avoided if the european union fundamentally changed its negotiating position.
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the john lewis partnership, which includes waitrose, has launched what it calls a bold new plan to transform the business and boost its profits, which have slumped in recent years. it's investing a billion pounds in online services, and improving stores, over the next five years. but it also wants to become less reliant on shops to make money, by offering new services such as home insurance and housing. our business correspondent, emma simpson, reports. this employee owned business has been going for 91 years but what about the next? nothing's guaranteed for retailers anymore. and these big department stores are under the most pressure will stop right 110w most pressure will stop right now for every 100 times that is spent atjohn lewis, 60 of it is done online —— £60. meaning it is harderfor is done online —— £60. meaning it is harder for these stores to make money. time for some new ideas. more virtual services, for instance, like the christmas shop. more
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affordable prices and more investment online like expanding food deliveries but in future, this business is going to depend on more than just retail. financial services, we are already in and ina services, we are already in and in a small way, but we can see big opportunity to expand in an ethical way given the trust in the brand. we already are a landlord with a number of our stores today that we are looking at how we can expand housing to be even important to the community and outlook that make outdoor living. again, both brands are quite active but in quite a way. for me, we are an employee owned business. we are not a conventional business stop retail margins are compressing. 0ver business stop retail margins are compressing. over the longer term, if we want, if i as chairman want to be able to invest in my partners and invest in my partners and invest back into customers, we've got to find new sources of growth that our customers love that are going to provide more sustainable profitability for us and as you will see, we
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are expecting that by 2030, about 40% of our profits will come from outside retail, allowing us to pay our partners better, allowing us to invest even more in our customers. it isa even more in our customers. it is a big shift. stores remain important. the question is, all they need as many of them in future? emma simpson, bbc news. now on bbc news: on september 8th the moria refugee camp on the greek island of lesbos went up in flames. gabriel gatehouse investigates the events surrounding the blaze. warning this film contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting. moria was hell.
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0n the night of the eighth of september. europe's largest refugee camp went up in flames. the greek authorities say the fire was started by the refugees themselves, angry at conditions in the camp. more than 12,000 people already living in dire conditions were burned out of their tents. among them was a group of young filmmakers, most of them refugees from afghanistan. they've shared their footage with us. a huge archive of evidence from the fire and its
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aftermath that raises troubling questions about the blaze and about europe's dysfunctional policies on migration. since his early teens, yaser taheri has wanted to be at will make up. now he arrives at lesbos with his family after a ten monthjourney from afghanistan.
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moria was billed as a temporary camp to house 3000 refugees stopped by the time yaser taheri arrived, it had burst at the seams with 211,000 people living in squalor, waiting sometimes for years for their asylu m sometimes for years for their asylum claims to be processed. violence, disease and mental illness were commonplace. yaser taheri found an organisation called refocus, an ngo which teaches camera skills to help the residents of moria document their lives on the camp. then came the pandemic. since march, the camp had in
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under lockdown. but wasn't still the start of september that they diagnosed the first positive case. the authorities began isolating suspected cases in a specially built quarantine zone in kind —— inside the cab and that may have been a catalyst for what happened next. so this is, we're back to the eighth september, yeah? in the footage that yaser taheri shot on the night of the fire, we see a red car with its windows smashed yaser follows the crowd to the covid zone whether migrants release those who were held in
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quarantine. two hours later, what was a disturbance has become a riot. and it's now that the blaze really gets going. just tell me what we're looking at here. who's filming? 21 years old, also from afghanistan, is another member of the filmmaker‘s group.
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protests were not uncommon in the camp, nor were fires, but they've always been kept under control, until this night.
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was the camp torched by migrants as the greek authorities maintain? some of the fires were lit by refugees. 0n the fires were lit by refugees. on that, milad and yaser both ee, on that, milad and yaser both agree, but they don't believe thatis agree, but they don't believe that is the full story. so in your understanding of what actually happened, who started the forest fires and then what happened? small fires in protest? among the residents of the cab, few believe the official greek narrative. instead, they blame the fire on angry locals and far right activists. just a few miles off the turkish coast, lesbos has long
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been one of the entry points for refugees and migrants coming to europe. at the height of the migration crisis five yea rs of the migration crisis five years ago, thousands of people we re years ago, thousands of people were arriving on boats here every day. when we came, we found local people who were proud of a long tradition of hospitality. then came the eu — turkey deal, agreed in 2016, which effectively closed off europe's borders and turned islands like lesbos into permanent detention centres. when we returned here in the spring this year, the mood had changed. there were reports of vigilante groups attacking migrants and ngo workers. a fire at a smaller refugee centre was blamed on far right activists. near the camp in moria village, angry locals had set upa moria village, angry locals had set up a roadblock. the
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regional oven arrived to try to calm things down. are you worried... ? very worried, very worried. we know that some people try to ta ke know that some people try to take a profit out of the situations. if it continues, what will happen? it will be cost —— catastrophic, it has to stop. in moria village today, we could only find one person who was willing to talk to us. but as the camp grew, so did divisions within the village. some were making money letting their fields to the government 01’ their fields to the government or ngos to house the refugees. 0thers felt swamped as migrants at times outnumbered villages bya at times outnumbered villages by a factor of more than ten.
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0n the night of the blaze, panagiotis called 0n the night of the blaze, pa nagiotis called the 0n the night of the blaze, panagiotis called the fire brigade who initially told him they were busy with fires elsewhere on the island. you know this area, you know how fires, there have been fires here before, you have seen them happen. do you think this could have been an accident? no, no accident, no, no.
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if locals were somehow involved in the fire, people here were almost —— will almost certainly know about it and if so, they're not saying. less than two miles from moria village, thousands of refugees are still camped out by the side of the road. they've been here for days now, without shelter, without sanitation or proper access to food and water. nearby, a new camp is being built. some refugees are already moving in. but many worry it will be hard to come and go freely and for us, finding witnesses to the fire may become more difficult. but for now, there are still people searching through the remains of the old camp and here, we
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find someone who can tell us more about what happened. yaser says that this guy says he saw some local greeks helping set fire to the camp. it seems that some people who we re it seems that some people who were not refugees or migrants were, at the very least, seizing the opportunity to stoke the flames. it's 5:30am and we get a tipoff that the police are about to
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start clearing all the refugees off the road and into the new camp. well, the police have stopped us from driving through at the checkpoints, so we are taking the back roads and trying to climb in over the mountainside. as the camp wakes up, news of the police operation begins to spread. beyond the police cordoned, offices and protective suits are clearing the roadside. section by section, the riot police move forward, while officers in plain clothes tell the refugees to pack up. and they don't like the cameras. tell him to stop recording. the new camp is built on a disused military firing range, enclosed by the sea on one side and fences on the other. those
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who want to remain outside must now avoid the police. if they go to this camp, what's there, exactly, a prison? it increases the depression that i have, that everyone has. millot has been on lesbos for about nine months, he is afghan but he has come from a —— iran, his pa rents come from a —— iran, his parents sought refuge there when he was a young boy. his plan to leave behind an imperfect relatively secure situation was a complicated one. as an afghan person who grew up in iran, it is like a black person in america. yes,...
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so far, for him europe has not turned out to be that kind of place. he and yaser are still resisting the new camp, helping us resisting the new camp, helping us unravel what really happened. in the footage they filmed in the aftermath of the fire, there is another piece of the puzzle.
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yaser, did you find your family? where are they come over here? these pictures were felt a little after 7pm evening after the fire. this is insanity, man. the american voice you hear is doug herman. they walk through the half butt camp to check on yaser‘s family. hello, stranger, how are you? good to see you again. and then this. 0h, oh, man. at 7:23, a second fire. much of the camp had the previous night, but not all of it. now it looks like someone is back to finish the job. it's really going up now.
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0h really going up now. oh my god. the fire spreads rapidly through the remaining tents. but here's in detail. going back through the footage again people are packing up and leaving before seven o'clock, before the second fire starts.
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it seems like a lot of refugees in the camp nou what was about to happen, including milad. —— new. so it seems the second fire, at least, was not a spontaneous event. but if it was planned, then by who and who else new? the filmmakers tell me about a conversation they overheard among a group of camp residents earlier that morning.
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he said that, you heard him say that? if that's true, that means the locals basically helped a number of refugees to bonus whole place down. we managed to track down one of the migrants in this conversation. perhaps unsurprisingly he told a different story. he said the fire was the work of fascists. the term many migrants used to refer to local far right activists. 0ne refer to local far right activists. one thing seems clear, many residents of lesbos, locals and migrants alike, found themselves in an intolerable situation they felt powerless to change. they felt stuck?
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and ina and in a way you can understand the locals as well, who have been with this for five years. in their attempt to stem the flow of migrants across europe, the greek government and the eu turns lesbos and other islands into pressure cookers. the moria fire was, perhaps, an inevitable consequence. it's ten days since the fire. we get a message from yaser. yaser, hey, what's going on?
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the authorities now say anyone who wants their asylum claim to be considered must first come here. no—one knows exactly what to expect. will yaser and milad be separated? the will yaser and milad be separated ? the families will yaser and milad be separated? the families from the single man? 0nce the single man? once inside, will they be allowed out again? most people here say they'd be happyjust to make it off the island. yaser and his family hope one day to reach germany. the old moria embody the failures of the eu's migration
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politics. now it's gone, in brussels they are talking of a new start. but behind these fences it feels like they've swapped one prison for another. in ten years' time, when this is all over, where do you see yourself?
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maybe in ten years i am going to still be in this camp. i don't know. accept the reality. this is the world. it's like... people don't respect the differences between each other. but i still have hope that the world is notjust darkness. there is a narrow, bright light inside this dark world. hello there, the weather is set to change in a big way next week. but before then, essentially we've got more of the same. and probably skies looking a bit like this across many parts of the country. there will be a lot of cloud around this weekend. for many places, it may well be dry, but for all of us,
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it's going to be on the cool side. we've still got this nose of high pressure sitting across the uk. keeping this area of low pressure away, but threatening with some showers in the far southwest. also we've got cooler air coming down from the north, bringing all this cloud into scotland, into northern england and into northern ireland and there may be a bit of drizzle in that quite low cloud as well, so quite grey and gloomy. further south, still fairly cloudy out there but there may be a little sunshine at times, the odd shower more especially towards the far southwest of england. for many of us, temperatures like they were on friday, 12 or 13 degrees. that cloud still around into the evening and the cloudier skies continue to move across the northern half of the uk overnight. and again, a few pockets of light rain or drizzle further south. some breaks in the cloud, perhaps. the cloud certainly thinner here, so temperatures could be a bit lower than those sort of numbers suggest. but for many, we're looking at sixes and sevens on saturday night into sunday morning and a lot of cloud again on sunday. and again, we've got a few pockets of light rain or drizzle here and there. the showers should be moving away from the southwest over more southern parts of england and wales. there will be a better chance of seeing some sunshine, giving the temperatures a bit
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of a boost, 1a or 15 degrees, contrast that with the eight or nine that we're struggling up to the north—east of scotland and perhaps the north—east of england. high pressure over the weekend, doesn't last into next week. instead, we've got areas of low pressure coming in steadily from the atlantic, and that means the weather is changing. so, we've got some rain on the way on monday. at the moment, it looks like it's mainly going to be across northern ireland and into scotland, some heavier rain over the hills. england and wales with a little bit of sunshine at times. there will be a stronger wind from the south at this time. and that means temperatures are going to be higher, perhaps as high as 15 or 16 in the south—east of the uk. next week, though, looks very different from what we've seen just recently. it will be a bit milder but the winds will be strengthening with showers or longer spells of rain.
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this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. a teacher who showed pupils cartoons of the prophet mohammad is decapitated north of paris — france's president condemns it as a cowardly attack. translation: our fellow citizen was attacked in a cowardly way. he was the victim of an islamic terrorist attack. armenian missiles hit azerbaijan's second biggest city for the second time in a week, as fighting over the disputed region of nagorno—karabakh intensifies. a no—deal brexit may be on the cards — as the uk calls off further trade talks with the european union. disney reissues warnings for viewers on some of its most famous films — admitting they contain racism and stereotyping.

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