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Police in Las Vegas, Nevada say a man opened fire on a country music concert late Sunday, killing 59 people and wounding 527 others, in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

An edited list of mass shootings that have taken place in other parts of the world:

Paris, France

November, 2015

Terrorists claiming allegiance to Islamic State carried out several coordinated attacks in the city, including shootings of pedestrians on the street and a mass shootings at the Bataclan theatre. One hundred and thirty people were killed in the combined attacks.

Paris, France

January, 2015

Islamist gunmen stormed the office of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly magazine, and killed 12 people, including the paper’s top editors and cartoonists, in anger over its satirical cartoons of Islamic terrorists and the Prophet Muhammad.

Nairobi, Kenya

September, 2013

Al-Shabab Islamist militants, who are based in Somalia, attacked the upscale Westgate mall in Nairobi, killing nearly 70 people and wounding about 175. The siege latest for three days before government troops could end the attack.

Utoya, Norway

July, 2011

A gunman disguised as a policeman opened fire at a youth camp for political activists on the small island of Utoya, northwest of Oslo. The gunman, who had been linked to an anti-Islamic group, killed 68 campers. Separately, the gunman set off a bomb in Oslo that killed 8 people.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

April, 2011

A 23-year-old former student returned to his public school in Rio de Janeiro and opened fire on the students, killing 12 children and seriously wounding more than a dozen others, before shooting himself in the head.

Baku, Azerbaijan

April, 2009

A Georgian citizen of Azerbaijani descent killed 12 students and staff at the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy. Several others were wounded.

Winnenden, Germany

March, 2009

A 17-year-old boy shot and killed 15 people at his school, Albertville Technical High School, in southwestern Germany.

Mumbai, India

November, 2008

Islamist terrorists carried out a series of shooting and bombing attacks across the city over the span of several days, including mass shootings at two hotels, the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel and the Oberoi Trident. The attacks left 164 people dead and a further 308 people were wounded.

Moscow, Russia

October, 2002

A group of armed Chechen militants seized the crowded Dubrovka theater and took 850 people hostage. At least 170 people died in the terrorist attack.

Erfurt, Germany

April, 2002            

A 19-year-old student opened fire at his secondary school, killing 16 people, including 13 teachers, two students, and one policeman, before killing himself.

Port Arthur, Australia

April, 1996

A 28-year old man opened fire at a cafe on a historic penal colony site in Tasmania, killing 35 people and wounding 23. It was the worst mass-murderer in modern Australian history.

Dunblane, Scotland

March, 1996 

A gunman killed 16 children and one teacher at Dunblane Primary School before killing himself.

Montreal, Canada

December, 1989

A 25-year-old gunman shot 28 people at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec, killing 14 women, before committing suicide.

 
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Hundreds of people took to the streets in Barcelona to protest a police crackdown in Catalonia to stop an independence referendum in the region.

Protestors, many of them students, waved the Catalan independence flag Monday and held up signs demanding more democracy outside the headquarters of the Spanish police in Barcelona. Demonstrations also took place in several other Catalan cities, including Girona and Lleida.

The violence followed a police crackdown during Sunday’s independence referendum. Officials in Catalonia said nearly 900 people were injured when police tried to keep residents from voting in the referendum, deemed unconstitutional by the Spanish courts.

Video from Sunday showed police dragging people from polling stations and beating and kicking would-be voters and demonstrators.

Spain’s Interior Ministry said Monday that more than 430 National Police and Civil Guard agents suffered injuries from the clashes.

Amnesty International says its observers witnessed “excessive use of force” by Spanish police.

European leaders on Monday urged dialogue between Spain’s government and authorities in Catalonia. A spokesman for the European Commission said the referendum was “not legal” but said that “violence can never be an instrument in politics.”

The commission, the executive arm of the 28-nation EU, said in a Twitter message that “these are times for unity and stability, not divisiveness and fragmentation.”

EU chief Donald Tusk appealed to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajov on Monday to “avoid further escalation and use of force” in the standoff.

 
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Turkey’s armed forces chief, General Hulusi Akar, is in Tehran for talks with Iran’s political and military leadership, including President Hassan Rouhani. His visit precedes President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit, scheduled for Wednesday, and comes as analysts suggest the use and threat of and military force are increasingly becoming part of Turkish foreign policy.

Analysts point out preliminary talks before a presidential visit are traditionally carried out by the Turkish Foreign Ministry, but note Akar’s agenda in Tehran had a strong military flavor.

Tehran and Ankara have issued thinly-veiled military threats to the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government, following its independence referendum last month. It passed with 92 percent of the vote.

News agencies on Monday reported the Iranian military had moved up heavy artillery to the Iraqi Kurdish border. The deployment matches that of the Turkish armed forces already massed on Turkey’s Iraqi Kurdish frontier, ostensibly for military drills.

“Turkey is now looking at a change in its foreign policy,” noted former Turkish ambassador to Iraq Unal Cevikoz. “Turkey is considering the threat of the use of force and the use of force as a viable option for realizing its foreign policy objectives, and that is dangerous.”

Cevikoz noted a possible increase in the Turkish military’s influence over foreign policy. Possible evidence of a growing military role in diplomatic affairs included an August visit by Russian and Iranian armed forces chiefs to the Turkish capital, Ankara. The visits reportedly focused on the ongoing civil war in Syria, where all of these countries have their military forces deployed.

Historic military role

Such a scenario is not new to Turkey. Throughout the 1990s, the peak of fighting by the Kurdish insurgent group the PKK, the military held sway over much of Turkish foreign policy.

In the 2000s, as part of his policy to demilitarize Turkish society, then-Prime Minister Erdogan ended the military role in foreign policy.

“Turkey believed that if Turkey wants to have a peaceful and stable environment in the Middle East, this could be achieved not through security policies or use of military power, but through enhancing economic cooperation,” noted Cevikoz, who now heads the Ankara Policy Center.

The 2015 collapse in Ankara’s peace process with the PKK, and the Syrian civil war, are seen as the impetus for a recalibration in Turkish foreign policy.

“When Syria became a very important area where international terrorism is now finding a fertile ground and when the civil war expanded in Syria, I think that saw Turkey is shifting back to its security policies,” Cevikoz said.

Some analysts see a more robust foreign policy backed up by force as a necessity.

“In such a turbulent and difficult region with a variety of security threats, Turkey needs hard power as part of a portfolio of instruments to influence regional developments,” said Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar with the Carnegie Institute in Brussels. “In that sense, hard power in this region is necessary even if it’s to advance a diplomatic objective.”

Domestic policies

Domestic politics could also be a factor driving Ankara’s more robust foreign policy approach, analysts note. In 2019, Turkey faces presidential and general elections; both are predicted to be close.

“President Erdogan increasingly has presidential elections in sight,” said former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen, who is now a regional analyst.

Ankara has strained relations with several of its Western allies. And analysts warn there are questions over its future commitment to NATO as Erdogan’s rapprochement with Moscow deepens. The Turkish President has described his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin as “a valuable friend.”

Erdogan is also looking to improve ties as he heads to Tehran.

Cevikoz said if Turkey is “serious about the secularization of its foreign policy,” then it will “have to coordinate with countries like Iran and Russia,” which are not allies.

But that will not be a permanent alliance, he said, which “in a way will leave Turkey as a kind of lone wolf in the region.”
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The European Commission says Sunday’s independence referendum in Catalonia was “not legal” but also called on the Spanish government to open dialogue.

A spokesman for the commission, the executive arm of the 28-nation EU, said Monday that “violence can never be an instrument in politics.”

The commission said in a Twitter message that “these are times for unity and stability, not divisiveness and fragmentation.”

The director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir also called on the Spanish authorities to ensure respect for fundamental freedoms of peaceful assembly and expression,” in order to facilitate communication and employ “de-escalation measures to reduce tensions.”

“The Spanish authorities must ensure that police use force only when necessary and in strict adherence to the principle of proportionality,” she said.

Nearly 900 injured

Officials in Catalonia said nearly 900 people were injured when police tried to keep residents from voting. Spain’s Constitutional Court had suspended a law passed by the region’s parliament calling for the vote, but the referendum was held anyway.

In a televised address after polls closed, Catalonia regional President Carles Puigdemont said Catalonia had “won the right to become an independent state” and urged the European Union to stop looking “the other way.”

WATCH: Catalonia President

The government of Spain, however, forcefully disagreed.

Spain will do “everything within the law” to prevent Catalonia from declaring independence, Justice Minister Rafael Catala said Monday in an interview with Spanish public television.

“If anyone plans to declare the independence of part of the territory of Spain, as he can’t since he does not have the power to do so, we would have to do everything within the law to impede this,” Catala said.

Catalonia’s government said early Monday that preliminary results showed that 90 percent of voters in Sunday’s referendum want the region to declare its independence from Spain.

Regional government spokesman Jordi Turull said 2.02 million of the 2.26 million votes cast were for independence. He said nearly 8 percent of voters rejected independence and the rest of the ballots were blank or void.

Voter turnout was about 42 percent in Catalonia which has an electorate of 5.3 million voters.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who spoke from Madrid Sunday slammed the vote — calling it illegal and an attack on the rule of law.

“At this hour, I can tell you in the strongest terms what you already know and what we have seen throughout this day. There has not been a referendum on self-determination in Catalonia today,” Rajoy said.

Puigdemont replied, saying Rajoy was bringing shame on his country.

“The exterior image of the Spanish state keeps getting worse and today they have reached embarrassing levels that will always be always remembered,” Puigdemont said.

Police officers from Spain’s national police forces raided polling places in an effort to close them down and halt voting. Video showed police dragging people from polling stations and beating and kicking would-be voters and demonstrators.

Puigdemont said he would appeal to the European Union to look into alleged human rights violations in connection with the violent efforts to halt the vote.

IN PICTURES: Catalonia Independence

In a statement issued late Sunday, the State Department said the United States supports a strong and united Spain. The U.S. also supports the right to free assembly, the statement said, and urged those involved to act in a way consistent with Spanish law.

Several labor unions and other organizations called for a strike Tuesday to protest the police crackdown.
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Catalonia’s government said early Monday that preliminary results show that 90 percent of voters in Sunday’s referendum want the region to declare its independence from Spain.

Regional government spokesman Jordi Turull said 2.02 million of the 2.26 million votes cast were for independence. He said nearly 8 percent of voters rejected independence and the rest of the ballots were blank or void.

Voter turnout was about 42 percent in Catalonia which has an electorate of 5.3 million voters.

Catalonia regional President Carles Puigdemont said he would keep his pledge to declare independence unilaterally if the “Yes” side won Sunday’s disputed referendum on secession from Spain.

Watch: Catalonia President

In a televised address after polls closed, Puigdemont said Catalonia had “won the right to become an independent state” and urged the European Union to stop looking “the other way”.

The government of Spain, however, forcefully disagreed. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who spoke from Madrid Sunday slammed the vote – calling it illegal and an attack on the rule of law.

“At this hour, I can tell you in the strongest terms what you already know and what we have seen throughout this day. There has not been a referendum on self-determination in Catalonia today,” Rajoy said.

Puigdemont replied, saying Rajoy was bringing shame on his country.

“The exterior image of the Spanish state keeps getting worse and today they have reached embarrassing levels that will always be always remembered,” Puigdemont said.

Officials in Catalonia said more than 800 people were injured when police tried to keep residents from voting. Spain’s Constitutional Court had suspended a law passed by the region’s parliament calling for the vote, but the referendum was held anyway.

Police officers from Spain’s national police forces raided polling places in an effort to close them down and halt voting. Video showed police dragging people from polling stations and beating and kicking would-be voters and demonstrators.

Puigdemont said he would appeal to the European Union to look into alleged human rights violations in connection with the violent efforts to halt the vote.

In Pictures: Catalonia Independence

In a statement issued late Sunday, the State Department said the United States supports a strong and united Spain. The U.S. also supports the right to free assembly, the statement said, and urged those involved to act in a way consistent with Spanish law.

Several labor unions and other organizations called for a strike Tuesday to protest the police crackdown.
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Animals that make the water their home are uniquely sensitive to changes in their liquid world. Oysters are very good at filtering dirty water, and crayfish are very sensitive to changes in water quality. Now scientists in the Czech Republic are using these sensitive bottom dwellers to monitor water quality in a business where clean water matters. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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They emerged early Sunday with helmets, masks and flak jackets from temporary overnight accommodation, cheap boarding houses and chartered cruise ships painted with huge Warner Bros. cartoon figures, Tweetie Pie and Daffy Duck, docked at Barcelona’s port.

But as the day unfolded, Barcelona was far from being Disney World.

Soon after polling stations opened, police, many drafted from outside Catalonia, moved in under orders from the national government in Madrid to block an independence referendum they and the country’s constitutional court said is illegal under the 1978 constitution that declares Spain indivisible.

For Catalan separatists, Spain’s current constitution isn’t free of the stamp of the former dictator Gen. Francisco Franco, who ruled the country for 40 years. They say underlining the constitution is a shameful, purposeful amnesia, one that ignores the suffering of Catalonia during the brutal 1930s civil war and the suppression of the Catalan language during Franco’s 40-year-long dictatorship.

The ghost of Franco was never far from Sunday’s illegal referendum.

Some of the extra police drafted into Spain’s restive north-east region had been cheered as they traveled to Catalonia by rightwing Spanish nationalists waving the national flag and chanting provocatively, “Viva Franco.”

Sunday was a far cry from the unity and comradeship Spain presented to the world in August when Spaniards and Catalans mourned together the 13 killed and 100 injured when jihadists struck Barcelona.

IN PICTURES: Catalonia Independence Referendum

As a gray, wet Sunday unfolded and the police mounted a speedy show of force in the Catalan capital, firing rubber bullets and wielding batons at people lining up to cast their ballots, besieging polling stations, seizing ballot boxes and removing officials overseeing the illegal vote, Catalan separatists accused them of acting like Franco.

Some analysts feared Mariano Rajoy’s center-right national government was being maneuvered cleverly by the separatists into overreacting. They argued before the vote that Madrid should just ignore a referendum that has no legal standing. They will point to Sunday’s events as confirming what they feared might happen.

WATCH: Clashes Between Police, Protesters 

Spanish officials maintained it was never a serious option to ignore the vote; to do so would be to allow lawlessness and to permit a minority to kidnap the democratic process. The midweek announcement by the Catalan regional government that it would declare independence in the event of a “yes” vote, gave Madrid no choice but to act, officials argue.

Overnight thousands of pro-secessionists, both nervous and thrilled, occupied Catalonia’s schools, presenting a festive appearance as parents with their children danced and put on concerts and events. It was a tactical move to try to preempt the police from shuttering schools to prevent them serving as polling stations, something they had been warned would happen by Madrid.

Speaking to reporters in the Spanish capital on the eve of the vote, the country’s foreign minister said, “The law guarantees democracy, what they’re pushing is not democracy, it is a mockery of democracy, a travesty of democracy.”

Many Catalans, opinion polls show 49 percent oppose secession compared to 41 percent for it, no doubt agreed with those sentiments. Catalans opposed to the vote have been less vocal than secessionists with some saying they were getting harassed by separatists when they spoke out and labeled fascists.

As dawn broke Sunday more people gathered at designated polling stations. “Votarem, votarem!” – (“We will vote!”) they chanted. “It is pretty exciting,” said pro-separatist activist Jordi Gali outside a voting center in downtown Barcelona. “So many people are united with one idea in common,” he added.

Within two hours of the polls opening, Catalan government spokesman Jordi Turull announced that 73 percent of polling stations were functioning, but added, “there are constant attacks on the computer system.” The Spanish government disputed the claim, saying most designated polling stations had been shuttered.

Pro-independence leaders were quick to denounce police intervention. Barcelona’s mayor, Ada Colau, tweeted her anger, saying, “A cowardly president has filled our city with police. Barcelona, city of peace, is not afraid.”

Catalan regional president Carles Piedgement, a main proponent of the controversial referendum, said the “unjustifiable violence” created a terrible image of Spain.

They received some backing from overseas. Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, took the rare step of commenting on another European country’s internal affairs, tweeting, “Some of the scenes in #Catalonia this morning are quite shocking and surely unnecessary. Just let people vote.”

But Spain’s Guardia Civil said its officers were being harassed and provoked and reported by early afternoon nine policemen and two Guardia Civil officers had been injured while trying to stop the referendum. Posted video showed hooded figures throwing objects at police in central Barcelona.

But in the PR war over perceptions the separatists declared a moral win Sunday even before the polls closed. “Today, the Spanish state has lost… while Catalonia has won,” said Catalonia’s president Puigdemont.

 
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Spanish government efforts to block a regional referendum on Catalonia’s secession, have degenerated into violence as police shut down polling stations and confiscate ballot boxes, despite resistance by voters throughout the region.

According to Catalan officials more than 460 people are being treated for injuries in clashes that are intensifying as voter frustration grows at police patrols moving through Barcelona and other Catalan cities.    

Spain’s Vice Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said Sunday in Madrid, “There has been no referendum or appearance of any.”

She said police dismantling of internet connections to the regional census bureau  has neutralized any ability to formulate voting results.  But spokesmen for the Catalan regional government that called for the vote, say at 73 percent of voting stations are open and their own technicians are trying to fix downed internet lines.  

A Catalan official connected with the regional election commission that resigned last week under government threats of massive fines said voting results will be announced after midnight or sometime Monday.

The source, speaking to VOA on condition of anonymity, says votes will be counted manually and results announced by a special election board being formed by “experts and academics”. Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido says that attempts to legitimize today’s vote are a  “parody.”  

Violence erupted early in the day when police prevented the president of the Catalan regional government, Carles Puigdemont, from casting a ballot in his home district of Gerona.

WATCH: Clashes Between Police and Protesters

Police in riot gear charged a crowd that tried to surround them at the polling station, hitting one protestor in the eye with a rubber bullet. Puigdemont was later filmed voting at another polling station.

Catalan authorities urged voters to cast ballots at any open polling station they could find. In some cases people have been casting votes in ballot boxes set up on the streets. “The Spanish state has prevented Catalans from exercising their rights, giving a terrible image of  Spain” Puigdemont told journalists.

Spanish police officials say that they were let down by the Catalan regional police force who had assured them that they would not allow polling stations to open.

IN PICTURES: Catalonia Independence Referendum

Hastily organized interventions by Spain’s national police and the civil guard gendarmerie raiding poling stations once voting was already underway, led to embarrassing scenes of hooded policemen forcefully removing ballot boxes and abusing voters.

By midafternoon balloting seemed to be proceeding normalcy at some main voting stations. The mainstream social democratic opposition party, PSOE which at first supported the conservative government’s hard line policy towards Catalan secession, called on Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Puigdemont to resign and call new elections.

As an  apparent protest against the central government efforts to abort the referendum, Barcelona’s star soccer team canceled a match with another Spanish team that announced it would play with Spain’s colors sewed on its jerseys.

Under the threat of sanctions  from Spain’s football association, the Barcelona team finally agreed to play a closed door match with the team from the Canary Islands, where support for the central government is strong. 
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Turkey no longer needs to join the European Union but will not unilaterally abandon the stalled EU accession talks, President Tayyip Erdogan told parliament on Sunday.

“We will not be the side which gives up. To tell the truth, we don’t need EU membership any more,” Erdogan said.

Turkey’s 12-year-long accession talks have ground to a halt, with the EU especially critical of Ankara’s crackdown following a failed coup last year. Tens of thousands of people including teachers and journalists have been detained.

Erdogan’s government says EU states failed to appreciate the gravity of the threat which Turkey faced, and did not respond to requests to extradite coup suspects.

“The EU failed us in a fight against terrorism,” Erdogan said on Sunday, though he also suggested the bloc still needed Turkey.

“If the EU is going to leap forward, there is only one way to do so. And it is to grant Turkey membership and start an action of cultural and economic growth,” Erdogan said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an election debate last month it was clear Turkey should not join the EU and entry talks should end, despite it being a crucial NATO ally.
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Turkey’s largest foreign military base in the world opened Saturday in Mogadishu, in a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by Somali leaders, top Turkish military officials and diplomats.

Somali Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire and the head of the Turkish military, General Hulusi Akar have jointly inaugurated the 4 square kilometer (1.54 square mile) facility, which holds three military residential complexes, training venues, and sports courts. It had been under construction for the last two years.

General Akar said the base is the biggest sign of how Turkey wants to help Somalia.

“We are committed to help [the] Somali government, and this base will cover the need for building strong Somali National Army. And it is biggest sign showing our relationship.”

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Prime Minister Khaire highlighted the significance of the training base for his country.

“Today our country goes to the right direction toward development and the re-establishment of Somali Army, capable and ready for the defense of their nations,” said Khaire “This base is part of that on ongoing effort.”

More than 200 Turkish military personnel will train some 1,500 Somali troops at a time, according to Somalia’s defense Ministry. The Somali prime minister said it will manufacture an inclusive united Somali Army.

“This training base has a unique significance for us because it is a concrete step taken toward building an inclusive and integrated Somali National Army,” said Khaire. “My government and our Somali people will not forget this huge help by our Turkish brothers. This academy will help us train more troops.”

The inauguration ceremony was held amid tight security around the base located in the Jaziira coastal area in southern tip of the capital.

Hulusi Akar, the Turkish Army chief said, “the Turkish government would continue to support our Somali brothers until their country becomes militarily stronger.”

Other diplomats who attended the event said the training is part of an international effort to strengthen the Somali National Army to a point where it can take over security responsibilities from African Union troops currently fighting al-Shabab militants. The African Union has said it wants to begin withdrawing troops from Somalia next year.

Prime Minister Khaire said the base also will help to defeat the extremism and the ideology that drives young Somali men into violence and terrorism.

“To defeat terrorism and fight against the poverty, we have keep in mind that building our national security and eliminating corruption is the key,” he said.

Somalia has a significant number of military personal, but they are ill-trained and poorly equipped. Last week, the government repeated its plea for world leaders to lift an international arms embargo.

The U.S. already had deployed dozens of American soldiers to Mogadishu, and their presence marked the first American military forces in Somalia, except for a small unit of counterterrorism advisers, since March 1994.

The United Arab Emirates also has a military facility where they train the Somali Army, which many politicians condemn for taking orders directly from UAE commanders.

“The good news is not only the opening of this training base but also …that when Turkey trains our troops it will also equip them,” said Somali Military Chief, Ahmed Mohamed Jimale.

Al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab is attempting to overthrow the Somali government and install a strict form of Islamic law throughout the country. On Friday, 30 people were killed when al-Shabab militants stormed a Somali military army base in the town of Barire, 47 kilometers southwest of Mogadishu.

 
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Thousands of demonstrators have gathered in Barcelona to oppose Sunday’s referendum on Catalonian independence from Spain.

Waving Spanish flags, the protesters filled the square in front of Barcelona’s regional government buildings Saturday.

Madrid has declared the vote illegal, and authorities in Spain began sealing off polling stations and confiscating ballots. While the Spanish national government said there would be no Catalonian independence vote, Catalonia’s regional government continued preparations for it.

Hundreds of people supporting the referendum camped out in schools in an attempt to keep them open for Sunday’s vote.

Enric Millo, the highest-ranking Spanish security official in the northeastern region, said Saturday that police had already blockaded half of the more than 2,300 polling stations designated for the referendum vote.

He said Spanish authorities also had dismantled the technology Catalan officials planned on using for voting and counting ballots, which he said would make the referendum “absolutely impossible.”

The president of the Catalan National Assembly appealed directly to the “conscience” of police officers deployed to the polling stations while speaking to reporters Saturday.

“I am aware they have a job to do, that they have their orders and have to carry them out. We are aware of that. But we also know that they have feelings, conscience,” he said.

“So tomorrow, when they carry out their orders they will undoubtedly receive, I hope they keep in mind — during the situations they find themselves in — that these could be their children, their mothers or their nephews, members of their family who just want to be able to  express themselves in freedom.”

Spanish Culture Minister Inigo Mendez de Vigo said Friday that the independence vote would violate Spanish law and that the government would not accept the results.

“We are open to dialogue within the framework of the law. As you would understand, nobody can ask us … to engage in dialogue outside the framework of the law. It’s impossible,” he said. “No European political leader can even consider dealing with an issue that is not in [Spanish] government hands.”

Catalan authorities said they would declare independence from Spain within 48 hours of the vote if residents there chose to secede.

On Friday, Catalan farmers rode tractors through the streets of Barcelona, driving slowly and waving pro-independence flags and banners. The tractors eventually stopped, converging on the regional government building.

At the same time, European Union officials said they would not mediate the dispute between Spain and Catalonia, calling it a matter of Spanish law.

“[It is] a Spanish problem in which we can do little. It’s a problem of respecting Spanish laws that Spaniards have to resolve,” said European Parliament President Antonio Tajani.

European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans called on Europeans to respect the constitution and rule of law in their countries. He said people in the EU need to organize themselves “in accordance with the constitution of that member state.”

“That is the rule of law — you abide by the law and the constitution even if you don’t like it,” he said.

Catalan authorities previously had appealed to the EU for help, saying the Spanish government undermined their democratic values.
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Officials in far east Russia say a soldier who opened fire at other servicemen during drills has been tracked down and killed.

The military says the soldier, who killed three and wounded two other soldiers, offered resistance to arrest and was shot dead early Saturday following a massive manhunt.

During Friday’s incident, the soldier fired his Kalashnikov rifle at his comrades waiting to have target practice at a base outside the town of Belogorsk near the border with China and then fled.

The city administration in Belogorsk says the soldier came from the province of Dagestan in Russia’s North Caucasus.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has sent a commission to investigate the shooting.
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Kosovo’s president, Hashim Thaci, says U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has pledged that the United States will be directly involved in reaching a final agreement to normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia. 

Thaci told VOA’s Albanian service after meeting with Pence on Friday at the White House that “Pence will be focused and maximally involved” in reaching a deal between the two countries. 

“I believe that this willingness of the U.S. administration and personally of Vice President Pence is a guarantee for the success of this process,” Thaci said. 

He said he is confident the process will “lead Kosovo into a final agreement of normalization and reconciliation of Kosovo-Serbia relations and would open prospects for Kosovo’s integration into the United Nations.”

A White House statement Friday said Pence “expressed appreciation for Thaci’s leadership, along with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, to advance the EU-facilitated dialog to normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia.”

The White House said Pence and Thaci “agreed on the importance of advancing reforms to strengthen the rule of law, fight corruption and boost economic growth” and said Pence reaffirmed the “United States’ support for a sovereign, democratic and prosperous Kosovo.”

The White House also encouraged Kosovo to ratify the border demarcation agreement with neighboring Montenegro “to resolve this long-standing issue.”

Thaci told VOA that Pence called on Kosovo to solve the issues as soon as possible. He said Kosovo has “good neighborly relations with Montenegro” and stressed the importance of such ties.

“No one can support you if you build bad relationships with your neighbors. We have a lot of problems with Serbia. We cannot open other problems with our neighbors that could cost us the integration processes” with the European Union, he said.

Thaci said the issue is in the hands of Kosovo’s parliament.

The border agreement was signed in 2015 but has not had sufficient support in Kosovo’s parliament for ratification.

The European Union insists Kosovo must approve the border demarcation deal before its citizens enjoy visa-free travel within Europe.

Montenegro has recognized Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia, but Serbia vehemently opposes it.

VOA’s Albanian service contributed to this report.
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Russian police released opposition leader and would-be presidential candidate Alexei Navalny on Friday after several hours in detention.

Police charged Navalny with repeatedly organizing unauthorized rallies, an administrative offense punishable with a fine of up to a 300,000 rubles ($5,200) and compulsory work for up to 200 hours.

“We were finally presented with a charge and released, and the trial will be on October 2 at the Simonovsky Court of Moscow at 15:00 Moscow time,” Navalny’s lawyer, Olga Mikhailova, told Interfax.

Police had stopped Navalny early Friday as he was headed to a campaign rally in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, where at least one other rally leader was also detained — Navalny’s campaign chief, Leonid Volkov. 

“I’m in a police station now and they’re going to accuse me of repeated violation of the procedure for holding a mass event,” Navalny told VOA’s Russian service reporter Danila Galperovich earlier Friday. “It means almost for sure they will arrest me after the court will hear my case. I don’t know when.”

Police in Nizhny Novgorod, about 260 miles (417 kilometers) east of Moscow, had cordoned off the campaign rally site hours before the event was to begin and removed a Navalny campaign tent.

Despite the police actions, hundreds of Navalny’s supporters rallied Friday in the provincial city in protest. Images from social media showed protesters walking on a central street while loud music from an officially sanctioned concert blared nearby. 

Call for reform

Navalny’s detention came as the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights issued a memorandum saying Russian authorities should revise the country’s freedom of assembly law, which, he says, has become more restrictive in recent years.

“As a result, the authorities have rejected a high number of requests to hold public assemblies,” said Commissioner Nils Muiznieks in the published memorandum. “Over the past year, there have been many arrests of people participating in protests, even if they did not behave unlawfully, as well as a growing intolerance toward ‘unauthorized’ events involving small numbers of participants and even of single-person demonstrations. 

“This runs counter to Russia’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights and it weakens the guarantees contained in its own Constitution concerning the right to freedom of assembly,” Muiznieks said.

Russia is one of 47 member countries in the Council of Europe, the continent’s leading human rights organization, but routinely dismisses its criticism.

‘Trend toward deterioration’

Navalny and his anti-corruption campaign team have been harassed and attacked numerous times by police and Kremlin supporters. In April, a man threw a chemical sanitizer in the Russian opposition leader’s face, causing a chemical burn that required eye surgery and left him partially blind.

Navalny supporter Nikolai Lyaskin was reportedly attacked in Moscow this month with an iron pipe.

In an exclusive interview with VOA reporter Galperovich on September 26, Navalny expressed dismay at the repressive trend.  

“We currently see a trend toward deterioration: At first it was fines, then administrative arrests, and now it is fabrication of criminal charges [and] house arrest,” he said.

Navalny said the trend is reminiscent of how Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s Great Purge began in 1937.

“The capabilities of propaganda are mostly exhausted: You turn on the TV, which from morning until night is talking about beautiful North Korea, awful Ukraine, ‘gay’ Europe, et cetera. It is already impossible there [on TV] to fan the flames higher. Therefore, they are using repression to take people off the streets, to intimidate them,” Navalny said.

Challenging Putin

Navalny plans to challenge Vladimir Putin in Russia’s March presidential election, though Putin has made no official announcement to run in a bid to continue his 17 years as leader.

The Russian opposition leader has been campaigning in cities across the country despite the central election commission declaring him ineligible because of a suspended prison sentence. Navalny’s supporters and numerous independent analysts back up his view that the sentence was politically motivated.

The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers on September 21 demanded that Navalny be allowed to take part in the elections and that the fraud case against him and opposition politician Pyotr Ofitserov be re-examined.

In the interview Tuesday with Galperovich, Navalny expressed doubt that Russian authorities would act on the European ministers’ demand.

“I do not think that international structures can affect that much; at least, we have not in recent years seen international structures somehow straightforwardly affecting the internal political situation in Russia,” Navalny said.

But he said the resolution was satisfying nonetheless. “It is probably the best of all possible rulings we could hope for,” he said. “It quite clearly and distinctly shows that, first of all, the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights was not implemented and, secondly, that there is a demand there for my admission to the elections.”

The European Court of Human Rights had demanded Navalny’s 2013 fraud case be retried because it violated the defendant’s right to a fair trial. Russia’s Supreme Court ordered a retrial in July that resulted in the same verdict and a suspended sentence.
…

Catalonia’s secessionists, who are trying to organize an independence vote from Spain on Sunday, may be getting aid from Russia as part of the Kremlin’s ongoing strategy to destabilize the European Union, according to European Union analysts.

Spain’s central government has deployed thousands of police to contain expected disorder. They have threatened local officials who support the referendum with stiff fines and jail. Spain’s constitutional court has declared the pending vote illegal.

Despite what some see as a heavy-handed response by Madrid, the United States and most EU governments have backed Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in his efforts to keep Spain united.

Russian state media have disseminated reports consistently favorable to Catalan independence in a move some analysts consider to be Moscow’s latest attempt to interfere in Western electoral processes.

The Kremlin has taken no public position on the referendum, calling it an “internal” matter for Spain.

Russia’s use of hacked information and dissemination of “fake news,” however, has been detected in recent Western electoral events,  including the 2016 U.S. elections, Britain’s decision to leave the EU, or Brexit, and the just-concluded German elections.

“It’s not that Russia necessarily wants the independence of Catalonia. What it’s principally seeking is to foment divisions to gradually undermine Europe’s democracy and institutions,” said Brett Schaffer, an analyst of the Alliance to Safeguard Democracy, a project supported by the German Marshall Fund, which monitors pro-Kremlin information networks.

The Russian social media outlet Voice of Europe (@V_of_Europe) has run such headlines as “The EU refuses to intervene in Catalonia even as Spain violates basic human rights,” calling Catalonia’s referendum “a time bomb that threatens to destroy the EU.”

The internationally broadcast Russian Television, or RT, alleged on September 20 that a “state of siege” has been imposed on Catalonia and dubbed cruise liners chartered to house additional police agents being deployed to the Catalonia as “Ships of Repression.”

The Russian digital newspaper Vzglyad borrowed a page from the Western media’s treatment of uprisings against Soviet domination in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, with the September 20 headline “Spain brutally suppresses the Catalan Spring.”

Some editorials and Kremlin-sponsored academics took note of how the U.S. and EU neglected to recognize a Russian-sponsored Crimean referendum approving reunification with Russia and compared that with their current indifference toward the Catalan vote.

Catalan secessionist politician Enric Folch, who is international secretary of the Catalan Solidarity Party for Independence, has said on Russian media that a Catalan state would support Moscow in world forums and recognize the independence of territories of Abkhasia and South Ossetia, which separated from Georgia with Russian support.

Folch was a star participant at a Kremlin-sponsored conference of independence movements in Moscow last year.

David Alendete, an investigative reporter with the newspaper El Pais, said the conference was organized by a Russian lawyer who is defending Russian computer hackers arrested in Spain and is wanted by the FBI in connection with the hacking of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential election campaign in the U.S.
…

In Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, cameras are being installed inside taxis in a move city authorities claim will provide security for both drivers and passengers. But with the ongoing crackdown over last year’s failed coup locking up more than 60,000 people and purging nearly 200,000 from their jobs, fears are growing that the measure is the latest effort to extend surveillance and control over the people.

An advertisement touts the benefits of Istanbul’s Itaxi. New taxis will be fitted with GPS tracking to allow drivers to find the quickest and cheapest route, as well as equipment to pay by credit card – all measures, the advert assures, aimed at enhancing passengers’ experiences.

The new taxis were announced to great fanfare. But the installation of a large digital camera in each vehicle, which authorities say will protect both drivers and passengers, is sparking controversy.

When you get in a taxi, the camera is clearly visible. What is unclear is whether it records sound as well as images, and where the images go. A driver VOA spoke to was more than happy with the device, although he admits he does not know who is watching.

” The new system is what is needed. I had an incident on Sunday night. I was attacked by a customer. If this system had been active, I would have been saved right away or the attacker wouldn’t have dared to attack,” the driver said. “There is a camera system and a panic button now.”

Not everyone in Istanbul appears so convinced. Another person VOA talked to questioned the motives behind the initiative.

“Some bad guys are stealing money from the taxi drivers or taxi drivers sometimes do violence against the women in the cabs, things like that, I think,” said the person who did not want to be identified. “If they do this for the real criminals then it’s not a bad idea. But we have doubts about [whether] our government, or policemen are doing this about the real criminals or not. A witch hunt is happening in Turkey now. So if they are using [this] for things like that, then of course it’s not a good idea to have things like that in the cabs.”

Failed coup attempt

Nearly every week there are trials for people accused of being involved in last year’s failed coup. Currently over 60,000 people languish in jail on coup plotting charges. Last year, 4,000 were prosecuted for defaming the president. Under emergency powers introduced following the botched military takeover, sweeping new electronic surveillance has been introduced, according to law professor Yaman Akdeniz of Istanbul’s Bilgi University. He has been studying the rise of surveillance culture, and warns concerns over the new taxis may be well-founded.

“Nowadays, something like this looks very suspicious because we have no idea where the data is transferred to or whether they have face recognition technology or voice recognition technology,” Akdeniz said. ” A lot of people are being investigated and prosecuted for allegedly defaming the president of Turkey. Because increasingly people are under surveillance and people don’t know what sort of technology or what sort of things are deployed by the government to monitor the citizens and it will get worse.”

There is a growing sense of concern seeping into Turkish society regarding surveillance. With the ongoing government crackdown and continuing prosecutions for insulting the president, any new innovation involving surveillance technology seems destined to be viewed with suspicion.
…

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was detained by police as he left his Moscow home Friday to attend a pre-election rally in a provincial town.

Russia holds a presidential election in March that incumbent Vladimir Putin is widely expected to contest. Navalny hopes to run despite Russia’s central election commission declaring him ineligible because of a suspended prison sentence that he says was politically motivated.

Navalny said on social media Friday that police had detained him in the lobby of his apartment block and told him they wanted to interview him at a police station.

The press service of Moscow’s interior ministry was cited by the TASS news agency as saying Navalny had been detained because of his “repeated calls to take part in unsanctioned public events.”

The authorities say opposition protests must be pre-approved by them, but Navalny has in the past said that the Russian constitution enshrines the right to freely hold such events.

On Friday, he denied the police’s latest allegations, writing on social media “I’ve never done that.”

Navalny had been scheduled to address a pre-election rally in the city of Nizhny Novgorod later Friday, part of a series of regional events he hoped would help him build support for his presidential run.
…

The U.S. Senate has confirmed Jon Huntsman as the new U.S. ambassador to Russia, filling a void at a critical tie in U.S.-Russian relations.

Huntsman is a former governor of the U.S. state of Utah who previously served as ambassador to Singapore and China.

The confirmation was unanimous and swift, with Democrats and Republicans joining in a rare consensus to support President Donald Trump’s choice for the top U.S. diplomat in Moscow. The Washington Post quoted Democratic Senator Benjamin Cardin as saying Trump could not have made a better choice than Huntsman.

The new U.S. ambassador will arrive in Moscow as tensions remain high between the U.S. and Russia on issues that include allegations of Russian meddling in U.S. elections and interference in eastern Ukraine.

Trump has rejected allegations by political opponents that his campaign colluded with the Russians.

Huntsman testified this month before the Senate Foreign Relations committee and said there is, in his words, “no question” that Moscow interfered in last year’s presidential election.
…

Turkey says it would release American Pastor Andrew Brunson, who has been detained for nearly a year, if the United States extradited Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara blames for last year’s failed coup attempt.

“They say ‘give us the pastor’.  You have a preacher [Gulen] there. Give him to us, and we will try [Brunson] and give him back,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a televised speech.

Brunson, who has lived in Turkey for 23 years, and his wife, Norine, were arrested for alleged immigration violations in October 2016.  She was released, while his charges have been upgraded to supporting Gulen’s network, which Turkey has labeled a terrorist organization.

The couple ran a Christian church in the Aegean city of Izmir.

Norine met with U.S. Secretary of State of Rex Tillerson during his visit last month to Ankara. Tillerson said then that Brunson had been “wrongfully imprisoned”.

A decree last August gave Erdogan the power to extradite foreigners in exchange for Turkish prisoners abroad in “situations where it is necessary for national security or in the country’s interests.”  Turkey has repeatedly asked the United States to extradite Pennsylvania-based Gulen, accusing him of organizing the failed military coup last year.

U.S. relations with Turkey have soured recently over a number of issues, including what the U.S. sees as Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian rule.
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Drones will help deliver toothbrushes, deodorant and smartphones to Swiss homes this fall as part of a pilot project, the first of its kind over a densely populated area.

Drone firm Matternet, based in Menlo Park, California, said Thursday it’s partnering on the Zurich project with Mercedes-Benz’s vans division and Swiss e-commerce startup Siroop. It’s been approved by Switzerland’s aviation authority.

Matternet CEO Andreas Raptopoulos says the drones will take items from a distribution center and transport them between 8 to 16 kilometers to awaiting delivery vans. The van drivers then bring the packages to homes. Raptopoulos says drones will speed up deliveries, buzzing over congested urban streets or natural barriers like Lake Zurich.

The pilot comes as Amazon, Google and Uber have also been investing in drone delivery research.
…

The influx of over a million asylum-seekers into Germany in 2015 is widely seen as driving the upsurge in support for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany or AfD party, which gained 13 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election. The government hopes to stem that rise by integrating the refugees as quickly as possible.

Among the wave of asylum seekers entering in 2015 was 24-year-old Dilshad. He fled his hometown of Sinjar in Iraq as Islamic State swept across the region. After struggling to find permanent accommodation, is now living in a shelter for the homeless.

He says he’s not bothered by the rise of the far right.

“After coming from Iraq, where there was fear, Germany is not a place where there is fear. It follows democratic principles. I thank ‘Mama’ Merkel on behalf of myself and all the refugees,” he told VOA in an interview.

On the street outside the shelter in the eastern outskirts of Berlin, Alternative for Germany campaign posters still hang from the lampposts. One shows a pregnant white woman — the caption declaring “New Germans? We’ll make those ourselves.”

Gesa Massur, who helps manage the homeless shelter, says Dilshad is lucky — there are many other young refugees neglected by the state.

“I think this is really dangerous because maybe some young men, they don’t know what to do and they get on a bad way,” she said.

New migrants are trying to help one another stay on the right path. A government program called “multaka” or ‘meeting point’ in Arabic, trains Syrian and Iraqi migrants to act as guides in Berlin’s museums. They teach fellow refugees about Germany — and how to build a new life.

“It’s not about what’s inside the museums. It’s about who is making the tour, and what kind of reaction, what kind of interaction there will be between the people. We’re telling what we learned as a newcomer,” says Tony Al-Arkan, a qualified architect from Damascus who came to Germany as a student.

Fellow Syrian Salma Jreige conducts tours around the Museum of German History.

“Germany after the Second World War was completely destroyed,” she noted. “How the Germans rebuilt their country is a very important lesson for us to learn. Right there, there’s an object from Damascus. When people see that their culture is being shown in museums, this gives them the feeling that their culture is being respected. Without that, integration is impossible.”

Through programs like those at Berlin’s museums, the government aims to integrate the refugees as fast as possible.

The scale of the task may seem overwhelming. For newcomers like Tony and Salma, the solution lies not only in support from the state, but with the migrants helping each other.
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Even as Kurds celebrated the overwhelming approval of an independence referendum, Iraq took actions to punish the would-be breakaway state, vowing to shut down its airspace and join Turkey in holding military exercises.

Calling the vote “unconstitutional,” Iraq’s parliament on Wednesday also asked Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to send troops to the oil-producing, Kurdish-held region of Kirkuk and take control of its lucrative oilfields.

It told the 34 countries that have diplomatic missions in Kurdistan to shut them down, and it urged Abadi to enforce a decision to fire Kirkuk Governor Najmaldin Karim for holding the vote and deploy forces to areas that were under Iraqi government control before the fall of Mosul to Islamic State over three years ago.

“We will enforce federal authority in the Kurdistan region, and we already have starting doing that,” Abadi said.

The referendum isn’t binding, but it is the first step in a process that clearly leads in that direction, despite strong criticism from Iraq, its neighbors — particularly Iran and Turkey — and the United States.

These nations have described it as destabilizing at a time when all sides are still fighting against IS militants.

Turkish troops are conducting military exercises at the Iraqi border, and Iraqi soldiers joined in four kilometers from the Habur border gate between the two countries. National and international media observed the exercises from the main highway leading to the border gate.

Turkey, which has its own restive Kurdish minority, is particularly concerned about the independence movement sweeping into its territory. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned that all military and economic measures are on the table against the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), calling the decision to go ahead with the vote a “betrayal to Turkey.”

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Omer Merani, the Ankara representative of Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party, has been asked to not return to Turkey.

“If the KDP’s representative were here, we would ask him to leave the country,” Cavusoglu said. “We have instead said, ‘Don’t come back,’ because he is currently in Irbil.”

The Kurds, who have ruled over an autonomous region within Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, consider Monday’s referendum to be a historic step in a generations-old quest for a state of their own. It was approved by 92.7 percent of voters, and residents headed to Kirkuk’s citadel to celebrate late Wednesday after the results were released.

Iraq said it would close international airspace Friday over Kurdistan’s two airports — Irbil and Sulaimani — at 6 p.m. Domestic flights were allowed to continue. Most of Iraq’s neighbors, including Turkey, Egypt and Iran, said they would abide by the restriction and suspend flights there.

Qatar Airways will continue operations “as long as airways are open and we can transport our passengers safely,” according to CEO Akbar Al Baker, Reuters reported.

Maulood Bawa Murad, Kurdistan’s transportation minister, said Baghdad’s efforts to take over the airports would hurt the U.S. support missions for the fight against IS and that it would bode badly for the possibility of negotiations with Iraq.

“If this decision is meant to punish the people of Kurdistan for holding a referendum on its independence and deciding its fate, no talks with [Baghdad] will reach a conclusion,” Murad said.

While opposing the referendum, the U.S. said Iraq’s moves weren’t “constructive” to resolving the situation.

Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee who was recently in Kurdistan, said he was disappointed with the decision to hold the vote despite calls for a delay. He said he hoped officials there would proceed in a “cautious and thoughtful manner.”

“I don’t like the destabilizing effects it could have on Iraq and the elections that will take place next year,” Corker said. “It’s going to bring a lot of issues. The Kurdish people have been great friends of our country. They’ve helped so much to fight against ISIS.”

VOA’s Kurdish, Turkish and Urdu services contributed to this report.
…

The South American trade bloc Mercosur could seek trade deals with Canada, Australia and New Zealand this year, an Argentine official said Wednesday, as largest members Brazil and Argentina seek to open their economies.

Mercosur, which also includes Uruguay and Paraguay, is working with the European Union to finalize the political framework for a trade deal this year, at a time when the United States under President Donald Trump has been shying away from trade.

“There is a possibility that Mercosur starts negotiations with Canada, Australia and New Zealand this year,” Argentine Commerce Secretary Miguel Braun said at the Thomson Reuters Economic and Business forum in Buenos Aires.

“Integrating ourselves with these countries takes us in the direction we want to go,” he said, pointing to developed economies with high salaries. Argentina alone is seeking a trade agreement with Mexico, and Braun said it was also working on a trade agreement with Chile that would “deepen what we already have.”

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said in New York last week that Santiago was finishing a trade liberalization agreement with Buenos Aires to boost trade and open opportunities for investors.
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Facebook said on Wednesday its efforts to fight fake news during Germany’s national elections included taking down tens of thousands of fake profiles in the final month of the campaign.

Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice president of public policy for Europe, Middle East Africa, said the Silicon Valley-based company mounted an array of efforts to ensure the social media network was not used as a platform to manipulate public opinion.

“These actions did not eliminate misinformation entirely in this election but they did make it harder to spread, and less likely to appear in people’s News Feeds,” the Facebook executive said in a statement. News feed is the central feature in user profiles whereby they can see updates from people they follow.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union secured victory in Sunday’s balloting with fewer votes than expected, forcing her to enter complicated coalition talks with various parties to form a new government.

The company said it made a stronger push to remove fake accounts when it observed suspicious activity following widely reported foreign interference in the French and U.S. presidential elections over the past year.

Besides seeking to encourage civic participation and voter education efforts, it also worked closely with authorities, including the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), to monitor security threats during the campaign.

A variety of German political experts and social media watchers had given the campaign largely a clean bill of health in terms of any wide-scale efforts to swing votes in the run-up to voting day.

 
…

U.S. President Donald Trump has come out unequivocally in favor of Spanish unity, just days before voters in the Catalan region are slated to vote on independence from Madrid.

At a joint news conference Tuesday with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in a sweltering White House Rose Garden, Trump said he would bet most Catalonians want unity.

“I’m just for a united Spain,” Trump said. “I really think the people of Catalonia would stay with Spain. I think it would be foolish not to.”

Trump’s comments appear to go against official U.S. government policy. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said this month the United States would not take a position on the Catalan vote.

The Catalan government is pushing ahead with preparations for Sunday’s vote, even after the government declared the balloting illegal and Spain’s Constitutional Court suspended the referendum law.

The Spanish leader, speaking after Trump, cautioned Catalan separatists not to push ahead with their independence plans.

“The decision to unilaterally declare independence is not a decision I would make,” Rajoy told reporters. “It’s a decision which will have to be made or not by the Catalan government. I think it would be very wrong.”

The prime minister said holding a referendum next Sunday would be impossible.

“There isn’t an electoral committee, there isn’t a team at the Catalan government organizing the referendum, there aren’t ballots, there aren’t people at the voting stations — so it’s just crazy,” he said.

Rajoy said under those circumstances, the result would not be valid, and would only be a distraction.

“The only thing it’s doing is generating division, tensions, and it’s not contributing in any way to the citizens’ situation,” he said.

Trump said he could not predict whether the referendum would be held, even as he follows developments in the independence-minded province.

“I’ve been watching that unfold. But it’s actually been unfolding for centuries and I think that nobody knows if they’re going to have a vote,” he said.

“I think the president [Rajoy is considered president of the Spanish government] would say they’re not going to have a vote, but I think that the people would be very much opposed to that,” Trump told reporters. “I can say only speaking for myself, I would like to see Spain continue to be united.”

Catalonia divided

Opinion polls suggest that Catalonia’s population of more than 7 million is divided on the independence question. Catalan officials have said they would declare independence within days if voters approve the referendum.

At Tuesday’s news conference, Rajoy, whose country was victimized by an Islamic State-sponsored attack in August that killed 16 people in the Catalan capital, Barcelona, said he and Trump had spent a considerable amount of their meeting talking about terrorism.

“We’ve been hit by jihadi terrorist attacks on our soil,” he told reporters, noting that the two countries cooperate closely on anti-terrorism strategies. “We still need to do a lot in the area of intelligence, we need to improve coordination mechanisms in the area of cybersecurity or preventing recruitment and financing of terrorists.”

Rajoy also expressed support for Trump’s tough response to North Korea’s provocative nuclear missile tests, despite fears in some quarters that it could lead to war.

“No one wishes war anywhere in the world,” Rajoy said. “But it’s true that the recent events in North Korea, with implications in the neighboring countries, very important countries, it means that we all have to be forceful.

“Those of us who defend the values of democracy, freedom and human rights have to let North Korea know that it isn’t going anywhere in that direction,” the Spanish leader said.
…

Spain’s government said on Tuesday police would take control of voting booths in Catalonia to help thwart the region’s planned independence referendum that Madrid has declared illegal.

The dispute has plunged Spain into one of its biggest political crises since the restoration of democracy in the 1970s after decades of military dictatorship.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has said the referendum is against the law and the constitutional court has ordered it be halted while its legality is determined. Catalonia’s separatist government, however, remains committed to holding it on Sunday.

Rajoy, speaking on Tuesday alongside U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, said it would be “ridiculous” if the affluent northeastern region declared independence from Spain.

Trump said he opposed the referendum and wanted a united Spain. “I really think the people of Catalonia would stay with Spain. I think it would be foolish not to,” he told reporters.

Senior Spanish government officials said on Tuesday authorities had done enough to prevent a meaningful referendum as Catalonia lacked an election commission, ballot boxes, ballot papers, a transparent census and election material.

Logistics have been dismantled

“Today we can affirm that there will be no effective referendum in Catalonia. All the referendum’s logistics have been dismantled,” the Spanish government’s representative in Catalonia, Enric Millo, told reporters in Barcelona.

Catalonia’s prosecutor has ordered the regional police — known as the Mossos d’Esquadra — to take control of any voting booths by Saturday, a spokesman for the Madrid government’s Catalan delegation said.

In an order to police issued on Monday, the prosecutor’s office said they would take the names of anyone participating in the vote and confiscate relevant documents.

Anyone in possession of the keys or entrance codes to a polling booth could be considered a collaborator to crimes of disobedience, malfeasance and misappropriation of funds, the order said.

Unrelenting opposition

The Madrid government has in recent weeks taken political and legal measures to prevent the referendum by exerting more control over the use of public funds in Catalonia and arresting regional officials. Hundreds of police reinforcements have been brought into Barcelona and other cities.

Madrid has also threatened fines against bureaucrats working on the ballot, including the region’s election commission, which was dissolved last week.

These actions have provoked mass demonstrations and drawn accusations from Catalan leaders that the Madrid government was resorting to the repression of the Franco dictatorship.

Catalan government to hold election

A “yes” vote is likely, given that most of the 40 percent of Catalans who polls show support independence are expected to cast ballots while most of those against it are not.

But the unrelenting opposition from Madrid means such a result would go all but unrecognized, potentially setting up a new phase of the dispute.

The Catalan regional government, which plans to declare independence within 48 hours of a “yes” victory, maintained on Tuesday the vote will go ahead and it sent out notifications to Catalans to man polling booths across the region.

Many had not yet received information about where or when they would be working after the state-run postal service was ordered to stop all mail related to the vote, a parliamentary spokeswoman for one separatist party said.
…

French President Emmanuel Macron offered an ambitious vision for European renewal Tuesday, calling for the EU to work more closely on defense and immigration and for the eurozone to have its own budget, ideas he may struggle to implement.

In a nearly two-hour speech delivered two days after the German election in which Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc scored its worst result since 1949, limiting her freedom to maneuver on Europe, the 39-year-old French president held little back in terms of sweep, self-assurance and aspiration.

But at a time when Europe is beset by tensions between east and west and battling to overcome nearly a decade of draining economic crisis, Macron’s earnest and at times high-brow discourse ran the risk of falling on deaf ears.

Speaking at the Sorbonne, he portrayed Europe as needing to relaunch itself, saying that on issues as diverse as asylum, border protection, corporate tax, intelligence sharing, defense and financial stability it needed much deeper cooperation.

“The only path that assures our future is the rebuilding of a Europe that is sovereign, united and democratic,” the former investment banker and philosophy student said, flanked by a French and a European Union flag.

“At the beginning of the next decade, Europe must have a joint intervention force, a common defense budget and a joint doctrine for action.”

Germany’s limitations

In his run for the presidency, Macron made European reform a central plank of his centrist campaign, and he and Merkel have spoken frequently about their desire for France and Germany, the European Union’s two largest economies and often its engines of change, to take the lead on integration.

But five months into his five-year term, Macron faces the threat that Merkel, 63 and looking to start her fourth term, has less capacity to move than either would have hoped.

Her alliance is still the largest bloc in the Bundestag, but to build a working majority she will likely have to form a coalition with the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), who are opposed to many of Macron’s ideas.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, a senior member of the Social Democrats (SPD), hailed Macron’s speech “a passionate plea against nationalism and for Europe.”

“He can count on us,” said Gabriel, whose party has ruled out being part of a new grand coalition.

Rather than tailoring his speech to fit the contours of what the FDP, the Greens or Merkel may have wanted to hear, Macron kept his vision broad and far-reaching, while also detailing some specific ideas for an improved eurozone.

“A budget can only go hand in hand with strong political leadership led by a common [finance] minister and a strong parliamentary supervision at the European level,” he said, emphasizing the need for democratic accountability.

The fiscally conservative FDP dislikes the idea of a eurozone budget or any facility that may lead to financial transfers from wealthier eurozone countries to poorer ones, as well as the possibility of national debt being pooled.

The party has also called for phasing out Europe’s ESM bailout fund, which Macron wants to turn into a European Monetary Fund, and wants to see changes to EU treaties that would allow countries to leave the eurozone.

“You don’t strengthen Europe with new pots of money,” Alexander Lambsdorff, an FDP member in the European Parliament, said on Twitter in reaction to Macron’s speech.

In a statement issued by the FDP in Berlin, Lambsdorff said: “The problem in Europe is not a lack of public funds, but the lack of reform. A euro zone budget would set exactly the wrong incentives.”

2024 goal

Not shying away from addressing Germany directly even as it tries to resolve the fallout from Sunday’s election, Macron set an objective that the two countries completely integrate their markets and corporate rules by 2024.

“We share the same European ambitions and I know her commitment to Europe,” he said of Merkel. “I’m proposing to Germany a new partnership. We will not agree on everything, not immediately, but we will discuss everything.”

In Berlin on Monday, Merkel said it was important to move beyond catchphrases and provide detail on how Europe could be improved. It was not immediately clear whether Macron had managed to go beyond slogans as far as Merkel was concerned.

But Martin Selmayr, the chief of staff of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, said the proposals to reinforce the eurozone would be discussed alongside Juncker’s own at a eurozone summit planned for December.

Italy’s EU affairs minister, Sandro Gozi, said the speech would inspire European leaders into action.

“An excellent speech by Emmanuel Macron on reviving the European Union. Let’s work on this together, starting tomorrow at the Lyon Summit,” he said, referring to a meeting of the Italian and French leaders to discuss industrial policy.

Macron said he hoped his ideas would be taken into account in Germany’s coalition building negotiations. Those talks are not expected to begin until mid-October and may take several months.

“Some had said I should wait for the coalition talks to be concluded,” Macron said, adding had he done so, the reaction in Berlin would have been: “Your proposals are great but it’s too late, the coalition deal already lays out what will we do on Europe for the next four years.”
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Russia’s communications watchdog has threatened to block the access to Facebook next year if the company does not store its data locally.

Alexander Zharov, chief of the Federal Communications Agency, told Russian news agencies on Tuesday that they will work to “make Facebook comply with the law” on personal data, which obliges foreign companies to store it in Russia. Critics criticized the law that went into effect in 2015 for potentially exposing the data to Russian intelligence agencies.

Zharov said on Tuesday that the Russian government understands that Facebook is a “unique service” but said it will not make exceptions and will have to block it next year if Facebook does not comply.
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