Spain to trigger direct rule on Catalonia over independence bid
Updated 0834 GMT (1634 HKT) October 19, 2017
The Spanish government said Thursday it would begin the process to impose direct rule on Catalonia in an unprecedented move to crush the region's independence bid.
In a statement from Madrid, the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said it would invoke Article 155 of the constitution, a provision that allows the central government to suspend the autonomy of the Catalan regional administration. The statement did not spell out exactly what steps it would take.
Spain's Senate, controlled by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's Popular Party, would have to vote to approve Article 155 before it could be brought into effect in Catalonia.
Daphne Caruana Galizia: Establishment was out to get her, says family
Murdered investigative journalist’s sons tell of attempts on their mother’s life, and why they blame a ‘takedown of the rule of law’ in Malta for her death
Looking back, they had known – perhaps for a long time – that it might end like this. With hindsight, says Matthew Caruana Galizia , red-eyed from emotion and lack of sleep, it seems obvious. “This wasn’t an aberration,” he says. “It was a culmination.”
The air in the family home in the hamlet of Bidnija, half an hour’s drive from the Maltese capital, Valletta, is thick with grief and quiet anger. Police guard the entrance to the gravel driveway and the cast-iron gates in front of the house.
Matthew, his brothers Andrew and Paul, and their aunt Corinne sit on the sofa and a couple of old armchairs around a large, low table filled with empty coffee cups. It is a warm, comfortable, lived-in room; on another day, you might admire the view.
Opinion: Kenya needs statesmanship, not brinksmanship
Kenya's current political crisis is a symptom of deeper ethnic divides. Now political leaders must start addressing the country's real problems, writes Jane Nyingi.
Kenya’s fresh presidential poll has been thrown into disarray only a week before it was due to be held after a senior official from the electoral commission resigned early today. In a statement, Doctor Roselyne Kwamboka Akombe highlighted some of the reasons why she could not be part of the October 26 repeat polls.
But what caught my attention in her statement is that she capitalized the word "credible."
"The commission in its current state can surely not guarantee a CREDIBLE election on 26 October 2017 as it is organized by a divided commission and she doesn't want to be part of that mockery."
A trip through horror, confusion and contradictions in Syria
What happens when you hit the road in Syria, headed toward the capital of Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate? A lot, it turns out.
| REPORTING FROM SYRIA
In a world of increasing conflict, one country stands out as a sad emblem of misery: Syria.
The country’s 6-year-old civil war has sent 11 million people — half the population — fleeing their homes. Some 5 million people have left the country altogether. Those who remain face a nightmare of bombings, artillery attacks and a reign of terror wrought by the militant group Islamic State after it established its self-declared caliphate across a broad swath of Iraq and Syria in 2014. It was headquartered in Raqqah, an ancient city on the banks of the Euphrates River, 230 miles northeast of Damascus, that was once Syria’s sixth-largest city.
THE UNWITTING STAR of this year’s edition of Documenta, Germany’s leading art festival, was not an artist, but a former intelligence agent, Andreas Temme.
Temme, who now works in the personnel department of the local government in Kassel, where the art festival takes place, was arrested 11 years ago in connection with the murder of Halit Yozgat. A son of Turkish immigrants, Yozgat was shot and killed while sitting at the front counter of his family’s internet cafe on the evening of April 6, 2006.
Nowhere to hide: N Korean missiles spur anxiety in Hokkaido fishing town
Ever since North Korea lobbed two missiles far above this windswept fishing town on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, seaweed farmer Mitsuyo Kawamura says she's been on edge.
"Now when I hear a loud sound, I look outside, I look out at the ocean," 68-year-old Kawamura said from her seaside cottage in Erimo, where she lays out long dark strands of kombu seaweed on stones to dry in the sun. "I feel anxious, like I never know when it will come again."
As Japan prepares to vote in Sunday's national election, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called North Korea's escalating threats -- it also conducted a sixth nuclear test last month -- a "national crisis" that only he can lead Japan through.
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