CATALONIA
Puigdemont to stay in exile
Fugitive Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont on Saturday said he had had no intention of handing himself in to authorities during a brief visit to Spain earlier this week. Puigdemont, who fled abroad after leading a failed 2017 independence bid for Catalonia, defied an arrest warrant to return to Spain on Thursday. He delivered a speech to thousands gathered outside the Catalan regional parliament in Barcelona before slipping away. “I never had any intention of handing myself in to a judicial authority that is neither competent to persecute us... nor to render justice, but is motivated by political objectives,” Puigdemont said in a video published on social media site X. On Friday, Puigdemont had revealed he was back in Belgium, where he has lived in exile for the past seven years. The 61-year-old had been hoping to enter the Catalan regional parliament building to take part in a vote to pick a new leader for the wealthy northeastern region. Instead, he disappeared into the crowd as the Catalan regional police force launched a search. Speaking from his home in Waterloo, close to the Belgian capital, Puigdemont said he had been hoping to “enter parliament to take part in the session and exercise my right to speak and to vote.” However, a heavy police presence at the park near parliament where he gave a speech had convinced him to abandon those plans to avoid “certain arrest,” he said.
UGANDA
Landslide kills eight people
A landslide at a landfill in the capital, Kampala, has killed eight people, the city’s authorities said on Saturday. The incident happened late on Friday after heavy rainfall when sections of the landfill collapsed, covering some nearby houses, Ugandan media reported. Kampala Capital City Authority said government and Red Cross personnel were searching the site and had rescued 14 people. “On a very sad note, eight people have so far been found dead, six adults and two children. The rescue operation is still ongoing,” the authority said on its X account. The landfill, known as Kiteezi, has served as Kampala’s sole garbage dump for decades and had turned into a big hill. Residents have long complained of hazardous waste from the site polluting the environment and posing a danger to people. Parts of Uganda have been experiencing heavy rains in recent weeks causing flooding and landslides, although no fatalities had previously been reported.
UTAH
‘Toilet Bowl’ collapses
A large geological feature in southern Utah known as the “Double Arch,” the “Hole in the Roof” and sometimes the “Toilet Bowl” has collapsed, US National Park Service officials said on Friday. No injuries were reported. The popular arch in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area fell on Thursday, and park rangers suspect that changing water levels and erosion from waves in Lake Powell contributed to its demise. Michelle Kerns, superintendent of the recreation area that spans the border of Utah and Arizona, said the collapse serves as a reminder to protect the mineral resources that surround the lake. “These features have a life span that can be influenced or damaged by manmade interventions,” she said in a statement. The arch was formed from 190 million-year-old Navajo sandstone originating in the late Triassic to early Jurassic periods. The fine-grained sandstone has endured erosion from weather, wind and rain, the statement said. The recreation area encompasses nearly 5,180 square kilometers and is popular among boaters and hikers.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
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