Catalan crisis: Spanish court bars MPs' independence move

Pro-independence demonstrations have continued, following Sunday's referendum

Spain's Constitutional Court has suspended next Monday's session of the Catalan parliament, in a bid to pre-empt a possible push for independence.

The court said such a move would be "a breach of the constitution".

Earlier Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy warned Catalonia's regional government against declaring independence after a disputed vote last Sunday.

Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont had indicated that he could make such a declaration at next week's session.

The court's ruling on Thursday upheld a challenge not from the government in Madrid, but by the Socialists' Party of Catalonia, which opposes secession from Spain.

Allowing the regional parliament to meet and declare independence, the court said, would violate the rights of the party's MPs.

An earlier ruling by the court aimed at stopping Sunday's vote was ignored by Catalonia's leaders. That challenge to the court had come from Spain's government, which condemned the referendum as illegal.

The socialists won almost 13% of the vote in the 2015 election, and has 13 MPs in the 135-seat regional parliament.Organisers of Sunday's vote put the turnout at 42%, with 2.2 million people taking part. They say 90% voted for independence, however they have not published final results. There have been several claims of irregularities.

There was violence at polling stations as police, trying to enforce a Spanish court decision to ban the vote, attempted to seize ballot boxes and disperse voters.

How the crisis escalated

• 1 October: Catalonia holds banned referendum on independence, defying Spanish government and a Constitutional Court ruling; Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont says the independence camp has won.
• 2 October: The European Commission says it regards the referendum as illegal and an independent Catalonia would be outside the EU.
• 3 October: In a TV address, King Felipe said referendum organisers had showed their "disrespect to the powers of the state" and broken the rule of law.
• 4 October: Mr Puigdemont says a declaration of independence will come within days; the government says it will not give in to "blackmail"
• 5 October: Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy urges Catalan leaders not to declare independence. Constitutional Court bans session of Catalan parliament due on Monday.

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Also on Thursday, the board of Sabadell, a major bank, decided to transfer its headquarters from Barcelona to the south-eastern Spanish city of Alicante.

CaixaBank, another large Barcelona-based institution, is reported to be considering a similar move. This would ensure the banks remained within the eurozone and under the supervision of the European Central Bank.

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Rajoy's gambit

Analysis by BBC Europe Editor Katya Adler, Madrid

Mariano Rajoy is famous for his "wait-and-see" attitude in crises. He's more of a technocrat than a passionate politician. So far, it's served him well. While not wildly popular, he remains very much in control of Spain's central government.

But the Catalan question is risky for him. His apparent inertia this week is coming under fire from the Spanish left - who want him to start a dialogue with Catalan separatists - and the harder right who want him to take immediate action, shutting the Catalan government down, bringing the reins of power back to Madrid. Spaniards call it "the nuclear option".

In a nod to them on Thursday, Mr Rajoy warned of "greater damage" if Catalan separatists went ahead with a unilateral declaration of independence. Spain's constitutional court has now banned Monday's meeting of the Catalan parliament where that declaration was expected to be made.

While this may appear a setback for the separatists, they have ignored court rulings before. But Mr Rajoy hopes the weight of Spanish law will now serve to divide Catalonia's pro-independence parties - which range from the moderate to the radical - and weaken their resolve.

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Las Vegas shooting: Paddock may have planned to escape

Photo credit: BBC

The gunman behind Sunday night's mass shooting in Las Vegas planned to flee, and he may have had help with planning the massacre, officials suspect.

Stephen Paddock was "living a secret life, much of which would never be fully understood", Sheriff Joe Lombardo told reporters.

The gunman's girlfriend said she had no idea what he was plotting.

Paddock's motive for killing 58 people in the largest mass shooting in modern US history remains a mystery.

Police found the 64-year-old former accountant dead in a room on the 32nd floor of a hotel after he sprayed bullets on concert-goers below, injuring hundreds.

He apparently turned one of his many guns on himself as police closed in.

In a press conference on Wednesday, Clark County Sheriff Lombardo was asked if he saw evidence that Paddock had planned to escape after the attack.

The sheriff said "yes". Asked what it was, he said: "I can't tell you."

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Sheriff Lombardo was asked by a reporter if he thought Paddock had carried out the attack alone.

"You've got to make the assumption he had to have some help at some point," the sheriff replied.

"Maybe he's a super guy, maybe he was working out all this on his own, but it would be hard for me to believe that."

The possibility that Paddock could have had an accomplice is a twist in the investigation.

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In the aftermath of the shooting officials described him as "a lone wolf" and said he was "solely responsible for this heinous act".

The FBI's Aaron Rouse said no link to terrorism had been found so far, but they would not discard the possibility.

Police are investigating whether the mass murderer originally planned to targeted other music festivals.

Chicago police said they were looking into reports that Paddock booked a hotel room in August overlooking the Lollapalooza music festival in the Illinois city.

Former President Barack Obama's daughters were among the thousands of revellers.

It has also emerged that a week before his massacre, Paddock booked into a central Las Vegas apartment.

It was in a high-rise tower overlooking another open-air concert, Life is Beautiful, where acts included Muse, Lorde and Chance the Rapper.

The sheriff said more than 100 investigators had been combing through "disturbed and dangerous" Paddock's life.

Some 33 of the 47 weapons the suspect owned were bought in the past year.

LAS VEGAS SHOOTING: TIMELINE

75 minutes from first shots to 'suspect down'

22:05

First shots fired by Paddock

• 22:12 Officers reach 31st floor and report gunfire coming from floor above
• 22:15 Last shots fired into the concert crowd
• 22:18 Security guard on 32nd floor tells police he has been shot and points them to room
• 23:20 Swat teams enter gunman's room. They find 'one suspect down'

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police / broadcastify.com

Paddock - who was gambling just hours before he began shooting - had set up cameras both inside and outside the Mandalay Bay Hotel suite to see anyone approaching the room, police said.

Sheriff Lombardo added: "Anything that would indicate this individual's trigger point and that would cause him to do such harm, we haven't understood it yet."

What did Paddock's girlfriend say?

Marilou Danley, who was out of the country at the time of the shooting, has been described by US authorities as a "person of interest".

She voluntarily flew back to Los Angeles from the Philippines on Tuesday night to speak to the FBI.

Two weeks ago, she said Paddock surprised her with a plane ticket to visit her family in the South East Asian country.

Paddock "never said anything to me or took any action" which she understood as a warning of what was to come, she said in a statement read by her lawyer.

Ms Danley added: "I loved him and hoped for a quiet future together." ·

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While she was in the Philippines, he wired her $100,000 (£75,400), saying it was to buy a house.

"I was grateful, but honestly I was worried it was a way for him to break up with me," she said.

"It never occurred to me in any way whatsoever that he was planning violence against anyone."

Her sister earlier told Australian outlet 7News that Ms Danley "was sent away... so that she will not be there to interfere with what he's planning".

Paddock checked into a suite in the Mandalay Bay Hotel on 28 September, reportedly using some of Ms Danley's identity documents.

Will the attack lead to gun control?

Particularly bad US mass shootings typically spark renewed calls for gun control measures, which tend to falter as the public horror fades and the lobbying might of the National Rifle Association is brought to bear on Congress.

But some Republicans have said they might be open to the idea of banning a fully legal firearms accessory used by Paddock to such deadly effect.

Twelve of his weapons were fitted with a bump stock, which speeds up fire to many hundreds of rounds per minute

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Another World War II bomb defused in Germany

Some 10,000 people were returning to their homes on Tuesday after they were evacuated so that a 250-kilogramme aerial bomb dating back to World War II could be defused and removed from a construction site in West Berlin. The bomb was discovered near south-west Berlin’s Innsbruecker Platz square on Monday, prompting authorities to cordon off the area within a 500-metre radius and evacuate people in the surrounding residential buildings and patients in a home for the elderly.

The fire brigade and the police said in separate statements overnight to Tuesday that the bomb had been successfully defused and that 450 people were involved in the effort, which took several hours. Underground and suburban rail traffic was disrupted, and officers went house to house to ensure that the area was cleared before disposal experts moved in. More than 70 years after the end of the war, unexploded ordnance is regularly found buried in Germany, a legacy of the intense bombing campaigns by Allied forces against Nazi Germany. At least 60,000 people were evacuated in central Frankfurt in September, the biggest operation of its kind in post-war Germany, after a 1.8-tonne British bomb nicknamed “Wohnblockknacker,” or blockbuster, was discovered. In May, 50,000 residents were ordered out of their homes in the northern city of Hanover over several WWII-era bombs. And on Christmas Day 2016, the discovery of an unexploded 1.8-tonne British bomb prompted the evacuation of 54,000 people in the southern city of Augsburg.

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Las Vegas shooting kills at least 59 in deadliest ever US gun attack

People scramble for shelter at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after apparent gun fire was heard on October 1, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada.


A “lone wolf” gunman carried out America’s deadliest mass shooting in a meticulously planned attack after waiting for three days in a hotel suite before striking at a festival crowd of 22,000.

Stephen Paddock, 64, killed at least 59 people and injured a further 527 when he fired on concert-goers from the vantage point of a 32nd-floor hotel room in Las Vegas.

Armed with as many as 23 weapons, including semi-automatic rifles, Paddock opened fire at 10.08pm on Sunday (5.08am UK time) in a shooting spree that lasted between five and 10 minutes.

As police prepared to storm his hotel room, Paddock committed suicide by turning one of the guns on himself.

With the motive still unknown, police were scouring Paddock's personal life for clues.



Joseph Lombardo, the local sheriff for Clark County, said a search of the suspect's car turned up a supply of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer compound that can be used in explosives. It was used in the 1995 truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people.

Police found another 19 firearms, some explosives and thousands of rounds of ammunition at his home in Mesquite, along with "some electronic devices that we are evaluating at this time," Mr Lombardo told reporters.

Police obtained a warrant to search a second house connected to Paddock in Reno, Nevada, more than 400 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Assistant Sheriff Todd Fasulo later told reporters.

Chris Sullivan, the owner of the Guns & Guitars gun shop in Mesquite, issued a statement confirming that Paddock was a customer who cleared "all necessary background checks and procedures," and said his business was cooperating with investigators.

"He never gave any indication or reason to believe he was unstable or unfit at any time," Sullivan said. He did not say how many or the kinds of weapons Paddock purchased there.

Donald Trump described the massacre as an “act of pure evil” but sidestepped calls for tighter gun laws. His spokesman later said Mr Trump stood by the Second Amendment which guarantees the “right to bear arms”.


Isil repeatedly said it was responsible for the attack, claiming that Paddock had converted to Islam in the past few months. The terrorist group described him as a “martyr”, who was using the Arabic name Abu Abdul al-Bar al-Amriki. Both police and the FBI said they were still seeking a motive and added that Paddock was not known to be connected to any terrorist group.

Police said Paddock had checked into the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino Hotel on Thursday and then waited until the final act of the last night of a three-day country music festival when crowds were at their peak.

Mr Lombardo said: “Right now, we believe it’s a sole actor, a lone-wolf-type actor.”

Aaron Rouse, an FBI special agent, said: “As this event unfolds, we have determined to this point no connection with an international terrorist group.”

One possible theory, according to local reports, was that Paddock had made “several large gambling transactions in recent weeks”, suggesting he may have been a disgruntled punter who had racked up huge debts. His brother, Eric Paddock, last night said he had been a multimillionaire real-estate investor.

An official speaking to Reuters said Paddock, who had no known criminal record, had a “history of psychological problems”. Despite this, he bought his arsenal legally, including hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Paddock’s father was a “psychopathic” serial bank robber who was once on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list. Eric Paddock said his brother’s massacre was baffling. “We have no idea. We’re horrified. We’re bewildered and our condolences go out to the victims,” he said.


President Trump condemned the shooting, saying: “He [Paddock] brutally murdered more than 50 people and wounded hundreds more. It was an act of pure evil.”

He added: “To the families of the victims: We are praying for you and we are here for you, and we ask God to help see you through this very dark period.”

Pope Francis said he was “deeply saddened... by this senseless tragedy”, while Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, said: “The United Kingdom stands with the American people against this indiscriminate violence.”

The Foreign Office was trying to establish if any British citizens had been killed or wounded.

Jason Aldean, the country and western star, was on stage when Paddock started firing on the venue, about 400 yards from his hotel room. Video footage shows him diving for cover. Crowds ran, scaling fences to seek refuge under the stage or beneath parked cars close to the venue. Some were trampled in the race for survival.

Police said they found 23 guns in the gunman’s room, according to The New York Times. They included two weapons mounted on tripods at the windows and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.



Witnesses praised the heroic actions of military veterans in the crowd who used their skills to save lives “by plugging bullet-holes with their fingers”. Among them were three off-duty British soldiers from 1st Bn Queen’s Dragoon Guards in Las Vegas, on leave after a training exercise in the California desert, who treated casualties in the aftermath of the massacre.

Off-duty police officers, at least one of whom was killed, bravely stood tall among the audience, making themselves targets by doing so, in order to direct music fans to safety.

In its claim, Isil said that Paddock, who lived in a retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada, about 80 miles from Las Vegas, was a recent convert.

According to the terror group’s news agency, Amaq, the attack was carried out by a “soldier” of the caliphate “in response to calls to target coalition countries.” In a later statement, Isil said he had an Arabic name and “asks God to accept him”.

Isil often claims attacks by individuals inspired by its message but with no known links to the group. “Despite popular opinion, they do not claim everything,” said Shiraz Maher, a lecturer in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. “When [Isil] does claim something, there’s usually some degree of actual connection.”

The attack would not be the first directed against a concert. Isil gunmen stormed the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in a coordinated attack on the city in Nov 2015 in which 130 people died.

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Playmobil traffic cone 'in man's lung for 40 years'

Image copyrightBMJ

Image captionThe patient reported he regularly played with and even inhaled the toy pieces during his childhood

Doctors removed a toy traffic cone from a patient's lung - 40 years after he inhaled it by accident.

The 47-year-old man, from Preston, was referred to a respiratory clinic after having a cough for over a year.

Medics suspected the patient - a long-term smoker - had a tumour when scans showed something on his lung.

However, when they removed the mass they discovered it was the "long lost Playmobil traffic cone" he had received on his seventh birthday.

A report in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) said the postman told doctors he "regularly played with and even swallowed" the toy pieces during his childhood.

But, on one occasion, he believes he inhaled a tiny plastic traffic cone.

He did not report any ill-effects for decades, doctors said, until the persistent cough which caused him to seek medical advice.

Because the man was so young when he inhaled the toy, the report said, his airway may have been able to remodel and adapt to the presence of a foreign body.

It was not unusual for children to ingest or inhale small toys, it said, but "a case in which the onset of symptoms occurs so long after initial aspiration is unheard of".

Image captionX-rays taken after the cone was removed showed an improvement in the patient's lungs

Four months after the removal of the tiny traffic cone, the patient's cough had almost gone and his symptoms had improved markedly, the report said.

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Lady Lucan, widow of Lord Lucan, found dead in London

Image copyrightITV/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Lady Lucan, the 80-year-old widow of Lord Lucan, has been found dead at her home in London, police have confirmed.

Officers found her body after forcing entry to the property in Belgravia on Tuesday, but her death is not believed to be suspicious, the Met Police said.

Lady Lucan was one of the last people to see her husband John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan, alive before he disappeared in November 1974.

He vanished after the family's nanny was found murdered at their home.

Veronica, the Dowager Countess of Lucan, was found unresponsive after being reported missing, police said.

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A Met Police spokesperson added: "Police attended an address on Eaton Row in Westminster... following concerns for the welfare of an elderly occupant.

"Officers forced entry and found an 80-year-old woman unresponsive.

"Although we await formal identification we are confident that the deceased is Lady Lucan."

Image captionVeronica Duncan married John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, in 1963

Lady Lucan was born Veronica Duncan in 1937 to Major Charles Moorhouse Duncan and his wife Thelma.

In the late-1950s and early-1960s she worked as a secretary and model in London and met her future husband at a golf event in early 1963.

They were engaged later the same year and married in November 1963.

Lord Lucan vanished after the body of Sandra Rivett, nanny to his three children, was found at the family home at 46 Lower Belgrave Street, central London, on 7 November 1974.

Lady Lucan was also attacked at the family's home on the same night Ms Rivett was murdered but managed to escape.

Lord Lucan's car was later found abandoned and soaked in blood in Newhaven, East Sussex, and an inquest jury declared the wealthy peer the killer of Ms Rivett a year later.

Image captionLord Lucan vanished from the family home in 1974 and has not been seen since

Lord Lucan was officially declared dead by the High Court in 1999, but has reportedly been sighted in Australia, Ireland, South Africa and New Zealand.

A High Court judge granted a death certificate in February last year allowing his son, Lord Bingham, to take over his title.

Earlier this year, Lady Lucan gave a television interview in which she said she believed Lord Lucan had made the "brave" decision to take his own life.

During the ITV programme she spoke of her own depression and her husband's violent nature following their marriage in 1963.

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Image captionSandra Rivett was bludgeoned to death in 1974

Lord Lucan timeline:

• 18 December 1934 Richard John Bingham is born in London into an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family.

• 1963 Marries Veronica Duncan, with whom he has three children.
• 1964 Ascends to the earldom on the death of his father.

• 1972 Their marriage collapses and Lord Lucan moves out of the family home at 46 Lower Belgrave St, London. He loses a custody battle and accrues gambling losses.

• 7 November 1974 The children's nanny Sandra Rivett is found dead. Her attacker also beats Lady Lucan severely before she manages to escape and raise the alarm at a nearby pub. Lord Lucan drives to a friend's house in Sussex in a borrowed Ford Corsair, which is later found abandoned in Newhaven. Friends receive letters in which he claims to have interrupted a fight during "a traumatic night of unbelievable coincidence" and says "the circumstantial evidence against me is strong". Police mount a search but find no further trace of him.

• June 1975 Lord Lucan is named as Ms Rivett's killer at the inquest into her death. Lady Lucan identifies him as her attacker.

• 1999 His family is granted probate over Lord Lucan's estate, but no death certificate is issued and Lord Lucan's son Lord Bingham is refused permission to take his father's seat in the House of Lords.

• 2014 The Presumption of Death Act enables Lord Bingham to apply to have Lord Lucan declared dead so he can inherit the family title.
• 2016 Lord Lucan's death certificate is issued after a High Court judge rules he is presumed to be dead.

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Iraqi Kurds must give up on independence or go hungry

Image copyrightEPA

Image captionIraqi soldiers joined Turkish troops for exercises on the Turkish side of the border on Tuesday

Turkey's president has said Iraqi Kurds could go hungry as a result of the punitive measures it is considering after Monday's independence referendum.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the head of the Kurdistan Regional Government of "treachery" for pressing ahead with the vote despite international opposition.

Massoud Barzani should now "give up on this adventure", he said.

Mr Erdogan has previously threatened to cut a vital Kurdish oil pipeline and stop lorries crossing Turkey's border.

Turkey fears that the emergence of an independent Kurdish state on its border will stoke separatist feeling in its own Kurdish minority.

The results of the referendum are yet to be declared, but a "yes" vote is expected.

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionSome 72% of the 5.2 million people eligible to vote in Kurdish-controlled areas voted

Kurdish leaders say that would not automatically trigger a declaration of independence, but rather give them a mandate to start negotiations on secession with the central government in Baghdad and with neighbouring countries.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ruled out any such talks on Monday night, saying he would not discuss the referendum's results because it was "unconstitutional".

This was the strongest rhetoric yet from President Erdogan on the Kurdish referendum. He called it "treachery" and a "threat to national security". Once again he threatened military or economic intervention, without elaborating.

Turkey is worried that independence might further Kurdish insurgency here and is concerned for ethnic Turkmen in the city of Kirkuk, which the Kurds want to be part of any future state. But there was a lot for a domestic audience - sabre-rattling to please nationalists at home.

Ankara has built a strong relationship with the Iraqi Kurds through an oil pipeline that feeds the Kurdish economy and Turkey's energy needs. And the authorities in Irbil oppose the PKK Kurdish militant group, allowing Turkish military bases in northern Iraq. Mr Erdogan warned he could close the oil valves in Turkey - but it has not yet happened.

With Turkey's notoriously abrasive president, the oratory sometimes does not actually translate into action.

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In a speech on Tuesday, Mr Erdogan said he had expected "until the last moment" that Kurdistan Regional President Massoud Barzani would postpone the vote.

"This referendum decision, which has been taken without any consultation, is treachery," he said."If Barzani and the Kurdish Regional Government do not go back on this mistake as soon as possible, they will go down in history with the shame of having dragged the region into an ethnic and sectarian war," he warned.

Mr Erdogan said Turkey, which has long been the Kurdistan Region's main link to the outside world, might now impose sanctions to persuade Mr Barzani's administration to "give up on this adventure that can only have a dark end".

"It will be over when we close the oil taps, all [their] revenues will vanish, and they will not be able to find food when our trucks stop going to northern Iraq," he added.Cross-border trade between the Kurdistan Region and Turkey was worth some $5bn (£3.7bn) in the first six months of 2017, according to Kurdish officials, while hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil flow daily through a pipeline from Kurdish-controlled oil fields to the Mediterranean via Turkish territory.

Iraqi soldiers also joined Turkish troops for military exercises in south-eastern Turkey on Monday, near the border with Iraq.

The US earlier said it was "deeply disappointed" that the Kurdistan Region held the referendum, but stressed that their "historic relationship" would not change.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Image captionCelebrations continued long into the night in the disputed city of Kirkuk

The referendum was held in the three Iraqi provinces that make up the Kurdistan Region, as well as in adjoining disputed areas claimed by the Kurds and the Arab-led central government that are controlled by Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

The Kurdish news agency Rudaw reported that 72% of the 5.2 million Kurds and non-Kurds registered as resident in those areas had voted. Ballots were still being counted on Tuesday, with initial results expected by the end of the day.

Kurds are the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East but they have never obtained a permanent nation state.

In Iraq, where they make up an estimated 15% to 20% of the population of 37 million, Kurds faced decades of repression before acquiring autonomy in 1991.

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