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 fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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