CATALONIA: Thousands gathered in Barcelona on Saturday to commemorate the fifth anniversary of an independence referendum to break away from the rest of Spain.

The 2017 vote, which was declared unconstitutional by Spain’s top courts, was marred by clashes with police who tried but mostly failed to confiscate ballot boxes.

The pro-independence side won by a landslide, but most of those in favour of remaining in Spain boycotted the vote.

Polls then and now show that the wealthy north-east region is roughly equally divided over the secession question.

SWITZERLAND: Police fired rubber bullets at protesters in front of the Iranian embassy in Bern on Saturday after two men climbed over the fence and pulled down the Iranian flag from a pole.

Police said nobody was injured, and the two protesters who entered the embassy’s premises were detained.

Police said they used rubber bullets after several other protesters tried to follow the trespassers and also tried accessing the premises.

IRAQ: Turkish warplanes killed 23 Kurdish militants in a raid 90 miles inside the country on Sunday.

The Turkish Defence Ministry said the number of casualties in the Asos region of northern Iraq, which is controlled by the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, was expected to rise.

The defence ministry also later said that seven “terrorists” had been “neutralised” (meaning killed) in northern Syria in response to the killing of a Turkish police officer in a missile attack on Sunday.

VATICAN: Pope Francis appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin for a ceasefire today, imploring him to “stop this spiral of violence and death” in Ukraine and denouncing the “absurd” risk of the consequences of nuclear attack.

Francis made his strongest plea yet about the conflict, which he denounced as an “error and a horror.”

It was the first time in public that he cited Mr Putin’s role in the war. The pontiff also called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “be open” to serious peace proposals.