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Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is dissolving the Catalan parliament and calling sn

The crisis began when Catalan leaders held an independence referendum, defying a ruling by the Constitutional Court which had declared it illegal.

Mariano Rajoy argues that Catalan separatists left him no choice. He had to act, to return the region to "legality", as Madrid puts it. But actually doing that will be complex and highly fraught.

It also favoured a unitary state because “without unity there is not truly a nation, since without unity there is no strength.”

The restoration of royal authority was not, of course, simply a matter of adjusting theories of kingship; there was a clear practical reason for Henry’s success. The country had tottered on the brink of disintegration for three decades. By the time of Henry’s succession, it was generally recognized that only a strong personality, independent of faction, could guarantee the unity of the state, even though unity meant religious toleration for the Protestant minority. In the Edict of Nantes (April 13, 1598) Henry guaranteed the Huguenots freedom of conscience and the right to practice their religion publicly in certain prescribed areas of the country.

Although the problem of religion was not finally settled by the Edict of Nantes, Henry did succeed in effecting an extended truce during which he could apply himself to the task of restoring the royal position

The chief need of the monarchy was to improve the financial situation, parlous since the days of Henry II’s wars and aggravated by the subsequent internecine conflict.

One of the murkiest issues has to do with the nature and causes of Stalin’s terror and the question of whether Stalin had broken with Lenin’s policies or continued them. Behind this lay the question of the institutionalization of violence in Bolshevik culture and the Soviet state.

the policies of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party did not at first rely on terror. However, the extreme conditions of the civil war from 1917 to 1922, in which some seven million people were killed, together with Lenin’s ruthless economic policies, led to the destitution and desperation of millions of people who found themselves without food, livelihood, shelter or security.

He concluded this grisly note with the directive: “Find some truly hard people.”The following month, he ordered: “It is necessary secretly — and urgently — to prepare the terror.”

Within the next 24 hours, the House is expected to pass and President Joe Biden is expected to sign the American Rescue Plan -- a massive $1.9 trillion Covid-19 stimulus bill that will likely be the signature accomplishment of the 46th president's first year (if not entire first term) in office.

The central question -- in both the near- and long-term -- around the bill is a simple one, with lots of potential answers: Was it worth it?

"When the histories of the Biden presidency are written, there's a fair chance that this will be looked upon as a serious error of judgement—one that may plague this administration for a good while."

The vote will come seven weeks into Mr. Biden’s presidency, as the growing number of vaccine doses given to Americans offers hope that the country is on course to move beyond the worst of a pandemic that has killed more than half a million people in the United States.

The president and House Democrats also sought to increase the $300-per-week unemployment benefit to $400, but the Senate kept it at its current level and tightened income caps for receiving stimulus payments.

The legislation establishes an aggressive effort by the new president to drive down poverty, as the measure offers substantial benefits for low-income Americans, including a sizable one-year expansion of the child tax credit.

GOP group 'Stop Stacey' targets Abrams ahead of expected 2022 run By Julia Manchester - 02/01/21 09:19 AM EST 863 17,083 AddThis Sharing ButtonsShare to FacebookFacebookFacebookShare to TwitterTwitterTwitter Share   Just In... Fauci: CDC will release new guidance for vaccinated Americans 'very soon' Healthcare — 2m 39s ago Veteran PAC slams Tucker Carlson for comments on female service members BriefingRoom BlogRoll — 24m 3s ago US officials debating sending millions of AstraZeneca doses awaiting clearance overseas: report Administration — 48m 11s ago Biden denounces hate, violence against Asian Americans: 'It must stop' News — 1h 29m ago Biden administration to implement testing programs in schools as part of reopening effort field

publican strategists aligned with Georgia Gov. Brian KempBrian KempGeorgia Senate votes to repeal no-excuse absentee voting Two Republicans can stop voter suppression Trump fires back at WSJ editorial urging GOP to move on MORE (R) on Monday launched an outside group aimed at stopping a potential 2022 gubernatorial run by Democrat Stacey Abrams.

"We will do whatever it takes to expose Stacey Abrams’ radical network, highlight her dangerous agenda, and ultimately defeat her — and her left-wing candidates — at the ballot box," the group's senior strategist, Jeremy Brand, said in a statement. "There is no time to waste: We must stand up, fight back, and Stop Stacey.”

Although zoning may seem like a technical, bureaucratic and decidedly local question, in reality the issue relates directly to three grand themes that Joe Biden ran on in the 2020 campaign: racial justice, respect for working-class people and national unity. Perhaps no single step would do more to advance those goals than tearing down the government-sponsored walls that keep Americans of different races and classes from living in the same communities, sharing the same public schools and getting a chance to know one another across racial, economic and political lines.

Single-family exclusive zoning, which was adopted by communities shortly after the Supreme Court struck down explicit racial zoning in 1917, is what activists call the “new redlining.” Racial discrimination has created an enormous wealth gap between white and Black people, and single-family-only zoning perpetuates that inequality.

By addressing a problem common to America’s multiracial working class, reducing exclusionary barriers could also help promote Mr. Biden’s third big goal: national unity. Today, no two groups are more politically divided from one another than working-class whites and working-class people of color. For centuries, going back to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, right-wing politicians have successfully pitted these two groups against each other, but every once in a while, America breaks free of this grip, and lower-income and working-class people of all races come together and engage in what the Rev. William Barber II calls “fusion politics.”

The head of a small hard-line party on Sunday said he would try to form a unity government with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's opponents, taking a major step toward ending the 12-year rule of the Israeli leader.

The pair have until Wednesday to complete a deal in which they are expected to each serve two years as prime minister in a rotation deal.

A unity government would end the cycle of deadlock that has plunged the country into four inconclusive elections over the past two years. It also would end, at least for the time being, the record-setting tenure of Netanyahu, the most dominant figure in Israeli politics over the past three decades.

Benjamin Netanyahu's run as the longest-serving Israeli prime minister may be coming to an end. Naftali Bennett, leader of the small right-wing party Yamina, announced Sunday evening he is working toward a coalition agreement with Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist party Yesh Atid, to join a new government.

"After four elections and a further two months, it has been proven to all of us that there is simply no right-wing government possible that is headed by Netanyahu. It is either a fifth election or a unity government," Bennett said.

The "change" coalition will likely be made up of parties from the right to the left of Israeli politics, but it would still almost certainly need some sort of outside support to reach the 61-seat threshold. That support may come from outside the government, such as one of the Arab parties, most likely the Islamist United Arab List, led by Mansour Abbas.

The president’s crude use of war dead and their grieving families also drew ire.

the president was drawing on a well-established tradition. U.S. politicians, especially presidents, have long relied on the fallen to advance political agendas, some more effectively or reverently than others.

presidents call on the symbolism of military sacrifice to remind the public that they belong to something greater — a nation worth dying for, which in turn strengthens the commander in chief at its helm.

“The Case for Nationalism” is not really a Trump book, Lowry writes, though it was, he admits, “occasioned by him.” Lowry says he became interested in the subject after the president’s inaugural address and now wishes to acknowledge the “power and legitimacy” of Trumpian nationalism

his brief for nationalism can be vague, facile and inconsistent, built on a selective reading of argument and history.

Nowhere are those shortcomings more evident than in his sanitized interpretation of the nationalism emanating from the White House.

hina poses an “existential threat” to the international human rights system, according to a new report released today by Human Rights Watch (HRW) after the organization’s executive director was denied entry to Hong Kong at the weekend. “It’s not simply a suppression at home, but it’s attacks on virtually any body, company, government, international institution that tries to uphold human rights or hold Beijing to account,” HRW’s executive director Kenneth Roth told TIME ahead of the report’s release.

Roth said he had been in Hong Kong to release a report on gender discrimination in the Chinese job market less than two years ago. He said he believes this year was different because the Chinese government “made the preposterous claim that Human Rights Watch is inciting the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests.”

China’s detention of a million members of the Uighur ethnic minority group in Xinjiang province, and an “unprecedented regime of mass surveillance” designed to suppress criticism are among the human rights violations described in the mainland, while the report also Beijing’s intensifying attempts to undermine international human rights standards and institutions on a global scale.

Tim, and that he meant to ask his question “in all due respect.”Warren, a year and more than a hundred and fifty town halls into her Presidential campaign, seemed to know what was coming. She said, “Why does this make me uneasy?” People in the crowd laughed, and then, with a spirited, resigned air, she said, “Go ahead, Tim.”Tim said that he was an evangelical Christian, and that he found himself “continually bombarded by Democratic candidates who demonize my beliefs, calling them bigoted and intolerant.” On issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, he said, he and Warren were bound to disagree, but he wanted to know what she might offer to voters like him. A man in a “Make America Great Again” hat stood and applauded vigorously, as if something brave had been said.

“I was born and raised Methodist,” Warren said. “I’ve been a Sunday-school teacher. Most of the scripture I quote is still King James. I’m old school on this.”

“I understand that you and I may have differences—there may be a lot of different views in this room,” Warren said. “But here’s what I’m certain about. And that is, a woman who is in the position of trying to decide what she’s going to do about a pregnancy that she may not have planned for, may not have hoped for, may have been forced upon her, is a woman who should be able to call on anyone for help. She should be able to call on her partner, she should be able to call on her mom, she should be able to call on her priest or rabbi or pastor. But the one entity that should not be in the center of that very hard decision is the federal government.”

Ethiopia predicted swift victory but northern rebels promised them “hell” on Wednesday in a two-week war threatening the vast nation’s unity and further destabilising the Horn of Africa.

The war has killed hundreds, sent 30,000 refugees into Sudan, and called into question whether Africa’s youngest leader can hold together Ethiopia’s myriad fractious ethnic groups.

its forces are marching on Tigray’s capital Mekelle and will soon triumph over the local ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which he accuses of revolt.

Migration could be “a dissolving force for the European Union” due to deep cultural differences between European countries and their long-term inability to reach a common policy, the EU’s most senior diplomat has said.

Borrell said nationalism was on the rise in Europe but this was more about migration than Euroscepticism. “Brexit actually was feared to be an epidemic. And it has not been,” he said. “It has been a vaccine. No one wants to follow the British leaving the European Union.

He attributed this to deep cultural and political differences inside the EU: “There are some members of the European Union that are Japanese-style – we don’t want to mix. We don’t want migrants. We don’t want to accept people from outside. We want our purity.”

While it was built at roughly the same time as the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Giza, we know far more about those Egyptian sites. Incomplete knowledge of Stonehenge has turned it into a riddle that is now part of its identity.

a new exhibition at the British Museum, “The World of Stonehenge,” which runs through July 17. The show strives to lessen the mystery around the monument by focusing on recent discoveries and putting them in the context of life in Britain, Ireland and northwestern Europe before, during and after Stonehenge’s construction.

He described the site as a mix between a town hall and a cathedral, where people mingled for both religious and social reasons.

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has begun warning Germans that they should prepare for decades of confrontation with Russia — and that they must speedily rebuild the country’s military in case Vladimir V. Putin does not plan to stop at the border with Ukraine.

Russia’s military, he has said in a series of recent interviews with German news media, is fully occupied with Ukraine. But if there is a truce, and Mr. Putin, Russia’s president, has a few years to reset, he thinks the Russian leader will consider testing NATO’s unity.

“Nobody knows how or whether this will last,” Mr. Pistorius said of the current war, arguing for a rapid buildup in the size of the German military and a restocking of its arsenal.