SPAIN’S KING ADDRESSES CATALONIA
MADRID» King Felipe VI used his traditional Christmas Eve address Sunday night to call on Catalonia’s newly elected parliament to renounce further moves toward secession.
“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.
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, but separatists regained a majority of seats.
Trump retweets image depicting “CNN” squashed beneath his shoe.
President Donald Trump on Christmas Eve retweeted a doctored image with the CNN logo imposed on a bloodlike splatter under his shoe, prompting an outcry — with critics deeming the picture and its timing offensive. The image had originated from a Twitter account named “oregon4TRUMP,” as a reply to one of Trump’s tweets boasting about his first-year achievements.
Flake says Trump is “inviting” Republican primary in 2020.
Sen. Jeff Flake warned Sunday that President Donald Trump will face a primary challenge or an independent opponent in 2020 if the Republican continues his bombastic ways.
“I do believe if the president is running for re-election, if he continues on the path that he’s on, that that’s going to leave a huge swath of voters looking for someone else,” Flake, RAriz., said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I think he’s inviting that. He’s probably inviting a Republican challenge as well.”
Flake said he wouldn’t rule it out, but that running himself is “not in my plans.”
Plane headed to Key West for holiday crashes, killing five.
A small plane headed to Key West for Christmas crashed Sunday at the end of a runway, killing five people, authorities said.
The twin-engine Cessna 340 crashed shortly after takeoff at Bartow Municipal Airport, immediately killing the 70-year-old pilot and his four adult passengers, according to a statement from Polk County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Carrie Horstman.
The sheriff’s office identified the pilot as Lakeland attorney John Shannon.
Shannon’s passengers included his two daughters, his son-in-law and a family friend.
Amtrak crews express concerns about training on new Wash. route where train derailed.
SEATTLE» To prepare for the opening of a new rail line, conductors and engineers typically go through training to familiarize themselves with the route, its landmarks and its speed limits.
Amtrak did some of those exercises along the new Point Defiance Bypass route, according to federal investigators, who said crews had made trial runs in the weeks before the line opened on Monday. But some Amtrak workers expressed concern in recent days about the adequacy of training.
The workers were concerned engineers had been piled into a single locomotive to do training runs as a group, that conductors were kept in cars farther back in the train, that some did their familiarization runs in the dark after midnight, and that supervisors were unwilling or unavailable to answer questions about key route characteristics such as speed.
“The Last Jedi” dominating the box office.
HOLLYWOOD»
“The Last Jedi” is continuing its dominance over the movie galaxy, as expected. The eighth installment in the Disneyowned space saga is expected to add an additional $69 million to its coffers during the weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday.