BARCELONA — Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont was on his way back to Belgium on Friday, having appeared at a rally in central Barcelona despite an outstanding warrant for his arrest in Spain, his party’s general secretary said on Friday.

Jordi Turull told RAC1 radio that he did not know whether Puigdemont had already reached his home in Waterloo, where he has lived for seven years in self-imposed exile since leading a failed bid for Catalonia’s secession in 2017.

He is wanted in Spain on suspicion of embezzlement related to a 2017 independence referendum, ruled illegal by the Spanish courts. Puigdemont says the vote was legal and therefore the charges linked to it have no basis.

“He did not come to be arrested in Spain but to exercise his political rights.”

Turull said Puigdemont had initially planned to attend an investiture vote in the regional parliament to elect a new leader of Catalonia.

Instead of walking from the rally to parliament, Puigdemont got into a car because of security concerns, and then decided at short notice to leave because he believed he would not be allowed to enter the parliament area, Turull said.

He added that Puigdemont had not wanted to provide an opportunity for photographs of him being arrested.

Turull was imprisoned between 2018 and 2021 on charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement over the independence referendum, but was pardoned by the Spanish government.

He has served as general secretary of Puigdemont’s hardline separatist party Junts since June 2022.
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washington — Germany’s entry into the U.S.-led U.N. Command, which expanded the multinational body tasked with defending South Korea against North Korea, reflects growing fears in Europe and the U.S. that multiple wars that could break out simultaneously across the globe, said analysts.

North Korea this week denounced Germany’s membership in the U.N. Command (UNC), calling the expansion an attempt by the U.S. to create an Asian version of NATO, according to state-run KCNA.

The move will “inevitably aggravate the military and political situation on the Korean Peninsula and the rest of the region,” KCNA said Tuesday.

Pushing back against Pyongyang’s criticism, the German Federal Foreign Office told VOA Korean in a statement on Tuesday that by joining UNC, it is “sending a signal for peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and strengthen[ing] our commitment in the Indo-Pacific.”

The statement continued, “Just as others are there for us, we are there for others when they need us.”

Germany joined UNC on August 2, becoming the 18th member of the body charged with maintaining the armistice on the Korean Peninsula during peacetime. In the event of war, the UNC would coordinate the movement of troops and weapons from its members to the Combined Forces Command of the U.S. and South Korea. 

Enhanced deterrence

Markus Garlauskas, who served as the U.S. national intelligence officer for North Korea from 2014 to 2020, said the UNC’s main role is to defend South Korea but that “expanding the number of countries contributing to UNC helps enhance deterrence … of the escalation of aggression in the entire region.”

This is particularly important because a conflict on the Korean Peninsula could escalate into a conflict with China, said Garlauskas, director of the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

The U.S. maintains several military bases and approximately 28,500 troops in South Korea.

But with wars raging in Ukraine and Gaza and the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, analysts said the addition of new members to the UNC makes it easier for the United States to respond to crises elsewhere without having to send additional forces that may be needed to defend South Korea if the North attacks.

“The U.S. military is not large enough to fight multiple contingencies around the world” by itself, said David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy.

The U.S. Commission on the National Defense Strategy released a report in July saying the U.S. must prepare to deal with simultaneous conflicts coordinated by China and Russia and involving countries such as North Korea and Iran, amounting to a “global war.”

Bruce Bennett, senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, said, “The more forces that are available to potentially assist South Korea, the better it is for the U.S. if conflict occurs in both Taiwan and in Korea.”

By joining the UNC, “Germany is hoping South Korea will also become more supportive of the defense of Ukraine against Russian aggression” by sending ammunition and other weapons, Bennett said.

South Korea has withheld sending lethal weapons directly to Ukraine while providing nonlethal weapons.

Germany’s membership in UNC follows a NATO summit last month in Washington where the alliance agreed to cooperate closely on security with the Indo-Pacific countries of South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Germany’s participation in UNC demonstrates “a tangible step” toward that defense cooperation, Garlauskas said. He noted that Pyongyang’s and Beijing’s support of Russia’s war against Ukraine “directly threatens Germany security.”

Germany, along with other NATO member states, has been arming Ukraine so it can defend against Russia, which has been threatening NATO with nuclear strikes. The U.S. and its NATO allies have condemned China for supporting Russia’s defense industry and North Korea for sending munitions to aid its war in Ukraine.

James Przystup, senior fellow and Japan chair specializing in alliance management in the Indo-Pacific at the Hudson Institute, said Germany, the U.K., France, the Netherlands and the EU “have all released Indo-Pacific strategy that recognizes that stability in the region is critical to Europe’s own prosperity.”

Those countries have also expressed their commitment to supporting a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific, he said. “But this is far from the emergence of an Indo-Pacific NATO.”
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VIENNA, AUSTRIA — The 19-year-old Austrian who masterminded a foiled plot to attack Taylor Swift fans at a concert in Vienna with a bomb or knife had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group, authorities said on Thursday.

The main suspect, who has North Macedonian roots, made a full confession in custody, Austria’s general director for public security, Franz Ruf, told a news conference.

He swore loyalty to the IS militant group’s leader on the internet and kept chemicals and technical devices at his home in the town of Ternitz in preparation for an attack, Ruf said.

The 19-year-old, whose name was not given, was planning an attack with an explosive or knife among the estimated 20,000 “Swiftie” fans set to gather outside the stadium, said national intelligence head Omar Haijawi-Pirchner.

“There is currently no information that other concerts are subject to an explicit threat,” he said at the news conference.

Two other Austrian youths, ages 17 and 15, were also detained Wednesday over the foiled plot.

Swift’s three concerts in Vienna, due to start on Thursday for a sold-out audience of 65,000 each, were canceled, to the consternation of fans, many of whom had traveled far.

“It’s just heartbreaking, just frustrating. But at the end of the day, I guess it’s for everyone’s safety,” said Mark del Rosario, who had flown from the Philippines for the show.

U.S. broadcaster ABC cited law enforcement and intelligence sources as saying Austrian authorities had received information about the Swift concert threat from U.S. intelligence.

It cited the sources as saying at least one of the suspects had pledged allegiance to ISIS-K, a resurgent wing of IS, on Telegram in June, although the plot was IS-inspired rather than directed by the group’s operatives.

Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said foreign intelligence agencies helped with the investigation, as Austrian law does not allow monitoring of messenger apps.

Event organizer Live Nation urged fans of Coldplay, which is due to play at the same stadium on August 21, to stay calm and said it was in contact with authorities.

It did not comment on whether the show would take place.

British police said on Thursday there was nothing to indicate that the planned attack in Vienna would have an impact on her shows at Wembley Stadium in London next week.

Past attacks and plots

“Concerts are often a preferred target of Islamist attackers, large concerts,” said Karner, listing the 2015 attack on Paris’ Bataclan venue and the 2017 bombing at the Manchester Arena where U.S. pop star Ariana Grande had played.

The planned attack also recalled a foiled plot by three IS-linked suspects against Vienna’s gay pride parade last year.

Authorities have revamped their national security intelligence in the wake of a 2020 attack by a convicted jihadist in the center of Vienna that left four dead, the first such militant attack in the Austrian capital in a generation.

 

Swifties disappointed

The shows were to be part of the record-breaking Eras Tour by the American singer-songwriter, which started on March 17, 2023, in Glendale, Arizona, and is set to conclude on Dec. 8, 2024, in Vancouver, Canada.

Swift, 34, has not yet commented on the cancellations on her official Instagram account, which has 283 million followers.

Her fans were horrified at the threat, with some begging organizers to postpone the concert instead of canceling it outright. Promoters have said they will pay back tickets.

“I can’t believe the concert i’ve been waiting for over 10 years is now gone. I don’t think i’ll ever get over this,” wrote one fan on social media.

“As disappointing as not being able to go to this concert is TRUST ME u do not want to experience that,” added another.

Some who had traveled from abroad for the concerts planned to do some sightseeing or hang with friends instead.

“We’ll check out some museums, maybe catch up with a few friends who reside here,” said del Rosario. “But apart from that, maybe look at Swiftie-organized events. To be with fellow fans, you know, share the same pain and just dance it out. As I believe Taylor Swift would want us to have fun.”

One group of local Swifties said they had received permission to still hold tour parties in coordination with local police.
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MOSCOW — Russian internet monitoring services reported a mass outage on the availability of video hosting site YouTube on Thursday as Russian authorities step up criticism of the platform.

Russian internet monitoring service Sboi.rf said there had been thousands of glitches reported about YouTube in Russia. Users said they could only access YouTube via virtual private networks, or VPNs.

“YouTube is not working,” one anonymous user said in comments on the site.

Reuters reporters in Russia were unable to access YouTube. The website remained available via some mobile devices.

Google, which owns YouTube, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Russia’s state communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, also did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

YouTube is one of the last major bastions of free expression on the Russian internet, where the site continues to host material by Kremlin opponents that have been largely removed from other social media sites popular in Russia.

The site’s download speeds have notably slowed in recent weeks, for which Russian lawmakers have blamed YouTube owner Alphabet’s Google, something the company disputes.

Alexander Khinshtein, head of a parliamentary committee on information policy, warned last month that YouTube speeds would drop by as much as 70%.

He said the degradation was “a necessary step, directed not against Russian users, but against the administration of a foreign resource that still believes it can violate and ignore our legislation without punishment.”

Khinshtein later explicitly blamed the slowdown on Google’s failure to invest in Russian infrastructure, such as its local cache servers, something YouTube rejected.

A YouTube spokesperson said last week it was aware of reports that some people were unable to access YouTube in Russia. This was not because of any actions on technical issues on its part, it said.
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LONDON — Far-right demonstrations that had been anticipated by police in dozens of locations across Britain failed to materialize Wednesday as peaceful anti-racism protesters instead showed up in force.

Police had prepared for another night of violence at 100 locations following a week of rioting and disorder fueled by misinformation over a stabbing attack against young girls. Many businesses had boarded up windows and closed down in fear of what lay ahead.

Stand up to Racism and other groups had planned counter-protests in response, but in most places they reclaimed their streets with nothing to oppose.

In London, Bristol, Oxford, Liverpool and Birmingham, large, peaceful crowds gathered outside agencies and law firms specializing in immigration that had been listed by internet chat groups as possible targets of far-right activity. 

In resounding choruses they chanted: “Whose streets? Our streets!”

It was a vast change from the chaos that has erupted on streets throughout England and Belfast, Northern Ireland, since July 30.

Cities and towns have been wracked by riots and looting for the past week as angry mobs, encouraged by far-right extremists, clashed with police and counter-demonstrators. The disturbances began after misinformation spread about the stabbing rampage that killed three girls in the seaside community of Southport, with social media users falsely identifying the suspect as an immigrant and a Muslim.

Rioters spouting anti-immigrant slogans have attacked mosques and hotels housing asylum-seekers, creating fear in Muslim and immigrant communities. In recent days, reports have emerged of violent counterattacks in some areas.

The head of London’s Metropolitan Police Service said earlier Wednesday that officers were focused on protecting immigration lawyers and services. In addition to thousands of officers already deployed, about 1,300 specialist forces were on standby in case of serious trouble in London.

“We’ll protect those people,″ Commissioner Mark Rowley said. “It is completely unacceptable, regardless of your political views, to intimidate any sector of lawful activity, and we will not let the immigration asylum system be intimidated.”

By early late evening, though, with the exception of scattered disturbances and some arrests, trouble had not erupted. 

A crowd of immigrant supporters that quickly grew to several hundred in the London neighborhood of North Finchley found themselves largely alone with several dozen police officers.

The crowd chanted “refugees welcome” and “London against racism.” Some held signs saying, “Stop the far right,” “Migration is not a crime” and “Finchley against Fascism.” 

At one point, an unruly man who had been shouting at the group and pulling his shirt up to show off an eagle tattoo was punched by a protester. He was led away by someone and officers questioned a possible suspect. 

Outside an immigration center in the Walthamstow area in east London, an anti-racism protest leader barked “fascist scum” to which a crowd of hundreds responded: “off our streets.”

In Liverpool, hundreds showed up to defend the Asylum Link immigration center. A grandmother held a placard reading “Nans Against Nazis” and someone else held a sign saying, “When the poor blame the poor only the rich win.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has described the previous disturbances as “far-right thuggery,” rejecting any suggestion that the riots were about the government’s immigration policies. He has warned that anyone taking part in the violence would “face the full force of the law.”

Police have made more than 400 arrests and are considering using counter-terrorism laws to prosecute some rioters. The government has pledged to prosecute those responsible for the disorder, including those who use social media to incite the violence.

Among the first to be sentenced was Derek Drummond, 58, who received three years in prison after admitting to violent disorder and punching a police officer in the face in Southport on July 30. He was one of three men jailed after their cases were heard Wednesday at Liverpool Crown Court.
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Following last week’s prisoner exchange between Russia and Western nations, several of the political prisoners released by Moscow have arrived in Germany, historically a refuge for Russians fighting for change in their homeland. Marcus Harton narrates this report from Ricardo Marquina in Berlin.
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GENEVA — Soaring temperatures in July have had detrimental effects on the well-being of hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have found the monthlong extreme heat too hot to handle, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

“The extreme heat, which continued throughout July after a hot June … has had really, really devastating impacts on communities, on people’s health, on ecosystems, also on economies,” WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis told journalists Tuesday in Geneva.

“Extreme heat has a domino effect across society,” she said, noting that the world’s hottest day on recent record was registered on July 22. “All of this is really yet another unwelcome indication, one of many, of the extent that greenhouse gases from human activities are, in fact, changing our climate.”

WMO data show widespread, intense and extended heat waves have hit every continent in the past year and global average temperatures have set new monthly records for 13 consecutive months from June 2023 to June 2024.

“At least 10 countries in the past year have recorded daily temperatures of more than 50 degrees Celsius [122 degrees Fahrenheit] in more than one location,” Nullis said. “You can well imagine this is too hot for the body to handle.”

WMO reports that Death Valley in California, considered to be the hottest place on Earth, registered an average monthly temperature of 42.5 degrees Celsius (108.5 degree Fahrenheit) at Furnace Creek, “which is a record for the site and possibly the world.”

WMO normally does not measure monthly temperature records. But Randall Cerveny, chief rapporteur for the WMO’s committee for evaluating climate and weather extremes, said ”the record appeared to be reasonable and legitimate.”

While human-induced activity is largely responsible for the long-term warming trend, meteorologists cite above-average temperatures over large parts of Antarctica as another contributing factor.

According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, this has resulted in anomalies of more than 10-degrees Celsius above average in some areas, and above-average temperatures in parts of the Southern Ocean.

WMO climate expert Alvaro Silva said two consecutive heat waves that hit Antarctica over the last two years have contributed to record global temperatures.

“The reason is still under research, but it seems to be related with the daily sea ice extent,” he said, noting the Antarctic daily sea ice extent in June 2024 “was the second lowest on record. … This follows the lowest extent that we have in Antarctica in terms of sea ice in 2023.”

Sea ice extent is the surface area of ice covering an ocean at a given time.

Speaking from the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, Silva provided a sobering regional overview of the heat waves and extreme heat events, which are contributing to record global temperatures.

He observed that July was the warmest on record in Asia, while in Africa, he cited record-breaking temperatures in Morocco as having had “an important impact in terms of human health and deaths.”

He said intense heat waves in southern and southeastern Europe have “caused casualties and severe impacts on health.” At the same time, he pointed out that the fallout of heat waves in North America have been quite severe, noting that on August 1, “more than 160 million people, about half of the United States population, were under heat alert.”

WMO officials say evidence of our rapidly warming planet underscores the urgency of the Call to Action on Extreme Heat initiative launched by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres July 25.

In issuing this call, the U.N. chief warned that “Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, everywhere” and this was posing an increased threat to “our socio-economic and environmental well-being.”

WMO officials also stressed the importance of adaptation to climate change as a lifesaving measure, noting that recent estimates produced by WMO and the World Health Organization indicate the global scale-up of heat-health-warning systems for 57 countries alone “has the potential to save an estimated 98,000 lives per year.”

WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said bolstering heat early warning systems in line with her agency’s Early Warnings for All Initiative would ensure at-risk populations receive timely alerts so they can take “protective actions.”

But, she emphasized, climate adaptation alone is not enough.

“We need to tackle the root cause and urgently reduce greenhouse gas levels, which remain at record observed levels.”
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