SPAIN
Five separatists detained
Five Catalan separatists, including presidential candidate Jordi Turull, were on Friday placed in custody by the judge investigating Catalonia’s breakaway bid, the Supreme Court said. The judge detained former Catalan parliament president Carme Forcadell and three former regional ministers alongside Turull, who would not be able to attend a debate yesterday on his nomination to lead the region. The judge decided that the five pose a flight risk, after Catalonian lawmaker Marta Rovira became the latest leading pro-independence figure to flee abroad to escape charges. The court said a total of 13 Catalan separatists would be prosecuted, including former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont. The latest detentions could stir new tensions in Catalonia, where pro-independence movements called for protests on Friday night.
UNITED KINGDOM
Bomber gets life sentence
A teenage Iraqi asylum seeker who told police that he had been trained by the Islamic State group has been sentenced to at least 34 years in prison for bombing a London subway train and injuring 51 people. A judge on Friday gave 18-year-old Ahmed Hassan a life sentence, with a requirement that he serve a minimum term of 34 years. A jury last week convicted Hassan of attempted murder in the attack in September last year. Judge Charles Haddon-Cave called Hassan “a dangerous and devious individual” and said he plotted the subway bombing with “ruthless determination” while pretending to be a model asylum seeker. The homemade bomb he placed on a packed London Underground train only partially detonated at Parsons Green station. Prosecutors said there probably would have been fatalities if the device had functioned properly.
UNITED NATIONS
Number of starving surges
The head of the World Food Programme on Friday said the number of people around the world in danger of dying unless they get food urgently surged to 124 million last year — mainly because “people won’t stop shooting at each other.” Executive Director David Beasley told the Security Council that almost 32 million of those acutely hungry people live in four conflict-wracked countries — Somalia, Yemen, South Sudan and northeastern Nigeria. Globally, 60 percent of the 815 million chronically hungry people who do not know where their next meal is coming from live in conflict areas, he said. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock said that according to the latest data, northeastern Nigeria, Yemen and South Sudan still face the risk of famine.
UNITED STATES
Stamp honors Mister Rogers
It is a beautiful day to honor Mister Rogers with a postage stamp. The Postal Service has released a stamp featuring Fred Rogers, the gentle TV host who entertained and educated generations of preschoolers on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. The “forever” stamp, which went on sale on Friday, pictures Rogers in his trademark cardigan along with King Friday, a character from the Neighborhood of Make-Believe sketch. Postal officials held a dedication ceremony at the studio in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Rogers filmed his beloved Public Broadcasting Service show, which aired between 1968 and 2001. Rogers died in 2003 at age 74. Among those attending the ceremony were Rogers’ widow, Joanne, and David Newell, who played Mr McFeely, the deliveryman on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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