Catalonia: Spaniards wake up to a week of uncertainty
Updated 0738 GMT (1538 HKT) October 9, 2017
Spaniards woke up Monday facing a week of political uncertainty, with Catalan regional leader Carles Puigdemont expected to declare independence from Spain within a matter of days.
Puigdemont, the elected regional president of Catalonia and leader of its secessionist movement, vowed to make the declaration following a divisive and controversial referendum on October 1, that he said was the resounding voice of the people. Madrid maintains that the vote was carried out illegally and the result is invalid.
The standoff between Madrid and Barcelona has plunged Spain into its most serious political crisis in four decades, since the country transitioned to democracy.
Meet Kim Yo-jong, the sister who is the brains behind Kim Jong-un's image
North Korean leader’s sibling is about 30, and a computing graduate turned propagandist who has helped her brother cement his grip on power
Kim Yo-jong’s promotion to the politburo of North Korea’s workers’ party is a sign that Kim Jong-un has absolute trust in his younger sister – rumoured to be the brains behind his carefully constructed public image – as he seeks to tighten his grip on power.
Yo-jong, who is four years younger than her brother, was rarely seen in public until 2010, when she was photographed attending a Korean Workers’ party conference. By the following year, she was a regular presence in her father Kim Jong-il’s entourage, and was seen mourning alongside her brother after their father’s death in December 2011.
She did not receive an official mention in North Korean state media until March 2014, when she accompanied Kim Jong-un during elections for the supreme people’s assembly. There were even rumours that she was briefly responsible for state affairs during Kim’s prolonged absence from public life – attributed to an undisclosed health problem – in the autumn of that year.
Grooming gangs 'are abusing girls across the country', victims and investigators warn
Call for action comes as Bradford records 62 per cent rise in the number of referrals to its specialist child sexual exploitation service
Grooming gangs across the country are repeating the horrific abuse exposed in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and most recently Newcastle, victims and investigators have warned.
There are mounting calls for nationwide action to combat sexual exploitation, with authorities accused of playing catch-up after ignoring victims “for decades and decades”.
Sammy Woodhouse, who was abused as a teenager by the Rotherham ringleader Arshid “Mad Ash” Hussain and has waived her right to anonymity, said abuse was underway “all over the country”.
Bosnian Muslim commander Naser Oric acquitted at war crimes trial in Sarajevo
Naser Oric, known for his role in organizing the defense of Srebrenica, had been accused of murdering Serbian soldiers. He was one of a small handful of Bosniak leaders to face trial for war crimes.
The former commander of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, Naser Oric, was acquitted at a war crimes trial in Sarajevo on Monday.
Oric and one other defendant had been accused of murdering three prisoners of war during the Bosnian War, which lasted from 1992 to 1995.
Many Bosnian Muslims consider Oric a war hero for organizing the defense of the city of Srebrenica, where Serbian troops later slaughtered 8,000 Muslim boys and men. Many Serbians see Oric as a murderer.
Alot of the debate around black NFL players kneeling to protest police killings and racism seems to take place in a historical vacuum. The history of athletes and protest is seldom mentioned and, what’s worse, the reason why Colin Kaepernick and his comrades began protesting during the national anthem has been drowned out in the shouting. On #MAGA twitter, flooded in recent weeks with angry mobs calling for a boycott of the NFL, various images have been making the rounds depicting Martin Luther King Jr. with his hand over his heart in respect for the American flag. One photo was accompanied by a message saying MLK “didn’t take the knee in protest of the flag or the anthem, he took the knee in prayer to God.” It was followed by the hashtag #BoycottNFL.
Invoking King’s name on the right is nothing new — ahistorical versions of King have been used to defend gun ownership, racial discrimination, and the Republican Party. In this current climate surrounding the NFL protests, King has once again been transformed into a malleable symbol for rampant deployment by people trying to tell protesters and black people today to shut up. One of the biggest problems with all of this is that it is based on complete fiction and total ignorance of who King actually was and what he actually believed. It is also particularly vile when used to try to suppress protest against police killings.
ISIS Fighters, Having Pledged to Fight or Die, Surrender en Masse
DIBIS, Iraq — The prisoners were taken to a waiting room in groups of four, and were told to stand facing the concrete wall, their noses almost touching it, their hands bound behind their backs.
More than a thousand prisoners determined to be Islamic State fighters passed through that room last week after they fled their crumbling Iraqi stronghold of Hawija. Instead of the martyrdom they had boasted was their only acceptable fate, they had voluntarily ended up here in the interrogation center of the Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq.
For an extremist group that has made its reputation on its ferociousness, with fighters who would always choose suicide over surrender, the fall of Hawija has been a notable turning point. The group has suffered a string of humiliating defeats in Iraq and Syria, but the number of its shock troops who turned themselves in at the center in Dibis was unusually large, more than 1,000 since last Sunday, according to Kurdish intelligence officials.
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