Spain’s Tribunal Supremo on Monday upheld arrest warrants for Catalonia’s former leader Carles Puigdemont and other Catalan separatists charged with embezzlement, ruling that a recent amnesty law does not relieve them of their penal responsibility. The politicians, currently living in exile, are facing charges connected to the organization of the 2017 Catalan independence referendum, which [...]

A record number of politically motivated crimes occurred in Germany last year, according to a report published by the country’s domestic intelligence agency on Tuesday. The report by the Bundesverfassungsschutz juxtaposes domestic crime statistics of 2023 with monitored data about interior threats, such as suspected extremist groups and movements, and partially connects the increase in [...]

Last Wednesday, the pro-Palestine encampment on a small square in front of a Groningen University (RUG) building in Groningen was cleared by police officers and municipal services. The protesters, who had intended to end the camp in the next few days, left after being warned of a big police presence close by. Now nothing is [...]

A mayor-elect was shot and killed on Monday in the southern Mexcian state of Guerrero, according to a statement by the State Prosecutor’s office. Salvador Villalva Flores, returning from a trip to Mexico City, was traveling on the highway on the bus when he was fatally shot in the town of San Pedro de las [...]

Germany is considering deporting Afghan migrants who endanger public security back to Afghanistan, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters on Tuesday. Her remarks follow the fatal stabbing of a policeman by a 25-year-old Afghan at an anti-Islam event. The federal prosecutor has now picked up the case on the grounds of a suspected Islamist motive. [...]

Rahel Helmhart contributed to this dispatch.  Tuesday afternoon last week, one couldn’t avoid hearing the chants, claps and drums from the small square right in front of the Harmonie Complex at the University of Groningen (RUG). About 150 protesters, bystanders and a couple of policemen had joined a small encampment of around ten tents set [...]

Senior UN Officials decried the “plight of civilians” resulting from conflict in 2023 as “resoundingly dire” on Tuesday, pointing out civilian suffering and disregard for international humanitarian and human rights law around the world. Their remarks coincide with the 75th anniversary of the 1949 Geneva Conventions (GC), which the international community created in the aftermath [...]

The UN Security Council rejected on Monday a resolution drafted by Russia that urged countries to prevent the use of weapons in space. The resolution’s proclaimed purpose was to prevent an arms race in space and preserve space for exclusively peaceful purposes. With seven votes in favor, among them China, and seven against, the draft [...]

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo decried the vandalization of the Shoah Memorial, a memorial dedicated to the Holocaust and Jewish history during the Second World War, as “unspeakable” in a press release issued in the French capital on Tuesday. Overnight Monday, about 20 red hands were spray painted on the Shoah Memorial, including the Wall of [...]

A higher administrative court in Münster, Germany ruled on Monday that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which is Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, was justified in suspecting the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and its youth organization Young Alternative for Germany (JA) as extremism efforts. The court ruled that the office retains [...]