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.
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
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