Embassy move

GUATEMALA CITY: Guatemala’s president announced on Christmas Eve that the Central American country will move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, becoming the first nation to follow the lead of US President Donald Trump in ordering the change. Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales said that after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he decided to instruct Guatemala’s Foreign Ministry to move the embassy. MADRID: King Felipe VI used his traditional Christmas Eve address to call on Catalonia’s newly elected Parliament to renounce further moves towards secession from Spain. “The way forward cannot once again lead to confrontation or exclusion that, as we now know, only generates discord, uncertainty, anguish,” the Spanish monarch said in a televised speech. The King gave the address four days after regional parliamentary elections resulted in separatist parties being voted back into power. Spain’s Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, had dissolved the previous Parliament after it voted in October to declare Catalonia an independent republic. BETHLEHEM: It was a subdued Christmas Eve in the traditional birthplace of Jesus on Sunday, with spirits dampened by cold, rainy weather and recent violence sparked by President Donald Trump’s recognition of nearby Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Although there was no violence, Palestinian officials scaled back the celebrations in protest. KABUL: Afghan officials say that a suicide bomber has killed five MANILA: Twenty people have been killed in the Philippines when a jeepney packed with relatives travelling for Christmas Day mass collided with a passenger bus, police say. The pre- dawn accident also left 24 injured in Agoo town, La Union province, 200km north of Manila, according to Roy Villanueva, the municipality’s police chief. All those killed were passengers in the jeepney, a type of minibus which is the most popular mode of transport in the Philippines. They were believed to be relatives travelling to attend Christmas Day mass at a cathedral in the town of Manaoag in nearby Pangasinan province.

people in an attack on the capital Kabul. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said the bomber blew himself up near an office of the country’s intelligence service, killing five people and wounding two.