Police had yet to confirm how many people had been wounded but witnesses said they had seen several bodies lying on the ground in a busy area of the city in southwest Finland.

Police shot one suspect in the legs and arrested him, while security forces wrote on Twitter that police were “looking for other possible perpetrators”.

“They ask the population to leave and avoid central Turku,” the tweet added.

Public television station Yle reported that central Turku was on lockdown, with the police operation focusing on a busy square. Businesses were shut.

MTV3 television reported that police have increased security at Helsinki airport and at train stations.

The stabbing spree comes with Europe on high alert a day after drivers slammed vehicles into pedestrians in two attacks in Spain, killing at least 14 people and injuring more than 100 others. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the Barcelona attack.

The motive for the stabbing in Turku was not yet known. Finland’s interior minister was due to give a press conference at 1600 GMT.

“The government is following the situation in Turku closely and a police operation is under way,” tweeted Prime Minister Juha Sippila ahead of a cabinet meeting.

In 2012, Finland’s then-prime minister Jyrki Katainen escaped a knife attack in Turku while campaigning for municipal elections.

The man who approached him carrying a knife was found to be psychologically disturbed and no charges were brought against him.

A former capital of Finland, Turku remains a hub for business and culture.

As mourners left thousands of bouquets of flowers at the gates of Buckingham Palace and nearby Kensington Palace, after Diana’s death on August 31, 1997, the royal family were nowhere to be seen.

Prince Charles, divorced from Diana, and his mother Queen Elizabeth II remained at their Scottish residence of Balmoral, saying nothing for days.

Despite the British public’s mounting anger at the royal response — or lack thereof — it was not until the day before Diana’s funeral that the queen finally broke her silence with a live broadcast to the nation.

The monarch’s distance from the public outpouring of grief for the woman dubbed the “people’s princess” by then prime minister Tony Blair caused resentment.

This file photo taken on August 31, 1997 shows tributes plaved by the gates of Buckingham Palace in London 31 August 1997. // AFP PHOTO

Having been immersed in protocol and tradition for centuries, the royals quickly realised they were in urgent need of an image overhaul.

In her tribute to Diana, the queen said: “I for one believe that there are lessons to be drawn from her life and from the extraordinary and moving reaction to her death.”

The result was royals “having to become more professional, and having to take real control and take outside advice and better professional people,” public relations expert Mark Borkowski told AFP.

– ‘Human’ image –

The out-of-touch Buckingham Palace press office, which Borkowski remembers used to close over the weekends while some of the most interesting Diana stories unfolded, underwent a shake-up.

Sluggish employees were replaced with PR-savvy professionals.

Patrick Jephson, Diana’s former private secretary, said the current image of the monarchy was the product of a “very sophisticated news management campaign”.

The current media strategy focusses on distributing positive information about the monarchy, while at the same time protecting the royals’ privacy.

One of the first tasks post-Diana was to create a more “human” image for the queen, who had been reported as being more concerned about her dogs and horses than her citizens.

This file photo taken on June 17, 1997 shows Britain’s Diana, Princess of Wales (L), at a ceremony at Red Cross headquarters in Washington, to call for a global ban on anti-personnel landmines. // AFP PHOTO

Charles, mocked for being haughty and stiff, has also gone through a revamp since his ex-wife’s death.

“He has spent an enormous amount of money hiring very sophisticated, professional, political-style spin doctors to manage his image,” Jephson said.

The investment has paid off, with the public’s gradual acceptance of Charles’s relationship with his former mistress Camilla, whom he married in 2005.

 – Queen impresses at Olympics –

The extent of the royal recovery could be seen in 2011, when Diana’s eldest son Prince William married Kate in a ceremony watched worldwide as Britons held street parties in the couple’s honour.

“What they tried to do was to promote what was good about the royal family,” said Robert Jobson, co-author of the book “Diana: Closely Guarded Secret”.

Elizabeth II fell well and truly back in favour at the 2012 Olympic Games, when she approved a stunt which appeared to show her leaping out of a helicopter into the London stadium alongside James Bond, played by Daniel Craig.

“They want to be a more approachable, less aloof family… Not these upper-class aristocrats who don’t understand the people,” said Borkowski.

The media strategy appears to have succeeded, with the queen continuing her record-breaking reign with the support of her subjects.

“I think the monarchy under the stewardship of Her Majesty the Queen has certainly learnt lessons throughout the time”.

And as the monarch slowly steps back from some royal duties, her grandchildren Princes William and Harry are taking on more public roles — helped by a well-oiled media machine that helped burnish their image in the public eye.

“The whole place has been revolutionised,” Borkowski said.

Residents of the eastern city of Hangzhou — home to e-commerce giant Alibaba — can now register their internet-related civil complaints online and wait to log onto to their trial via videochat.

The cyber court will “offer regular people an efficient, low-cost solution to these new kinds of disputes that take place on the internet,” Du Qian, the cyber-court chief justice, told the official Supreme People’s Court news agency.

“Not only will this make lawsuits as convenient as online shopping, but it will also give online shopping the same degree of judicial protection as consumption at brick-and-mortar stores.”

The court will handle cases such as online trade disputes, copyright lawsuits and product liability claims for online purchases.

China is home to the world’s largest number of internet users — 731 million at the end of last year — and e-commerce is a vital part of the government’s efforts to turn China into a consumer demand-driven economy.

Consumers spent $17.8 billion during Alibaba’s biggest online shopping promotion on November 11 last year, more than twice the five-day desktop sales from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday in the US last year.

“A fourth person has been detained in relation with the events that have taken place in the last few hours in Cambrils and Barcelona,” police in the Catalonia region tweeted.

They said the arrest was made in Ripoll — the same city in northern Catalonia where another suspect and Driss Oukabir, a Moroccan, have already been detained on suspicion of as-yet unspecified involvement in the attacks.

Police are searching for Driss Oukabir’s brother Moussa, but it was not known whether he was the latest person arrested.

Spain is reeling from the double attack on Thursday and Friday that saw drivers in Barcelona and Cambrils plough into pedestrians, following similar attacks in other European countries including France, Britain and Germany over the last year or so.

Police said they killed five “suspected terrorists” during the night and four suspects have now been arrested, although authorities had said the driver of the van in Barcelona remained at large.

The three-day auction by South African John Hume, who runs the world’s biggest rhino farm, comes after a ban on domestic trade in the country was lifted three months ago.

The government said it would fight Hume’s court application to be granted sale permits.

“The Minister of Environmental Affairs is opposing the application,” the government said in a statement on Friday, declining to comment further.

Hume’s lawyer Izak du Toit claimed the permits had already been approved — but not issued.

“We will go to the High Court on an urgent basis,” du Toit told AFP, ahead of the auction due to start on Monday.

Hume and some other campaigners say poaching can only be halted by meeting the huge demand from Asia through legally “harvesting” horn from anaesthetised live rhinos.

He has stockpiles of six tonnes of horns and wants to place 500 kilogrammes under the hammer.

South Africa is home to around 20,000 rhinos, some 80 per cent of the worldwide population, but in recent years has suffered record slaughter by poachers.

Rhino horn is composed mainly of keratin, the same component as in human nails.

It is sold in powdered form as a supposed cure for cancer and other diseases — as well as an aphrodisiac — in Vietnam and China.

While any auctioned horn could not exported from South Africa, conservationists fear the sale will stimulate black market demand and undermine the four-decade old international ban on rhino trading.

The auction website is in English, but also in Chinese and Vietnamese.

Currently a rhino horn is estimated to fetch up to $60,000 a kilo on the black market — more than the price of gold or cocaine.

Joseph Okori, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), described the auction as “deplorable”.

“There is deliberate motive to target people in countries where people consume rhino horns,” Okori told AFP.

Joshua Wong and two other young leaders of Hong Kong’s huge Umbrella Movement protests were sentenced to months in jail on Thursday for their role in the 2014 rallies.

Supporters and rights group said the ruling by the Court of Appeal was more proof that Beijing is tightening its grip on the semi-autonomous city and that rule of law is being compromised.

“Hong Kong people are fully entitled to rights and freedoms. But no one can use the excuse of so-called democracy and freedom to conduct illegal violent activities,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.

“I want to reiterate that Hong Kong is a special administration of China… China is firmly opposed to any external forces interfering in Hong Kong affairs,” Hua said at a regular press briefing.

Britain, Hong Kong’s former colonial ruler, said it hoped the sentencing would not discourage “legitimate protest” in future.

US Senator Marco Rubio, chairman of the Congressional Executive Commission on China, described the three as “pro-democracy champions worthy of admiration, not criminals deserving jail time”.

Amnesty International slammed authorities’ pursuit of jail terms as a “vindictive attack on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly”.

Wong, who became the face of the mass protests while still a teenager, as well as Nathan Law and Alex Chow were given terms of six months, eight months and seven months respectively after the court upped their previous non-custodial sentences.

Anyone who receives a jail term of more than three months is barred from running for Hong Kong’s partially directly elected parliament for five years.

Defence lawyers argued the trio had insisted on non-violence including at Civic Square, where there was pushing and shoving between protesters and police.

Hong Kong enjoys freedoms unseen on the mainland after being handed back to China in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” deal, but there are growing fears those rights are disappearing.//AFP

The corpse is hauled out of one of Manila’s sprawling shantytowns, where so many people have been killed in Duterte’s drug war, and taken to a funeral parlour where other bullet-riddled bodies are lying on bare tables or a bloodied concrete floor.

Each of the dead men has a number in Roman numerals drawn in black pen above their bare feet to help the morticians keep track of the bodies that churn through each night. One of them is marked VI.

The scene on Friday morning offered a haunting vision realised for Duterte, whose campaign stump speech last year included advice to voters to set up funeral parlours because they would be guaranteed money-spinners when he was president.

“The funeral parlours will be packed… I’ll supply the dead bodies,” Duterte said at one rally in the northern Philippines, which attracted typical cheers from Filipinos fed up with crime and attracted by his man-of-the-people charisma.

Duterte easily won the election largely because of his law-and-order platform, which included a vow to eradicate all drugs in society within six months by waging an unprecedented crackdown in which tens of thousands of people would die.

During the 14 months Duterte has been in power, police have indeed confirmed killing more than 3,500 people officially termed “drug personalities”.

Unknown assailants have killed at least 2,000 others in drug-related crimes, according to police data, with rights groups attributing those and other unsolved murders to vigilante death squads or off-the-books police killings.

Until recently Duterte had been defiant in the face of criticism that, not only could his extraordinary campaign amount to a crime against humanity, it was bound to fail.

Duterte, 72, continues to insist his tactics are right — while balancing comments such as he would be “happy to slaughter” three million drug addicts with indignant denials that he had ever incited police to act outside the law.

But over the past week Duterte has begun inserting into his near-daily speeches on the drug war that he is unlikely to achieve his goals by the time he has to stand down as president in 2022.

Duterte has partly blamed a corrupt police force for not being able to complete its mission.

– Fresh offensives –

====================

By coincidence or not, police in Manila and surrounding provinces this week launched fresh offensives which led to some of the deadliest days of the drug war.

Continuing a theme of creating jargon that appears to trivialise the killings, police named their raids “One Time Big Time” campaigns.

The name echoed a defunct television show that had been popular with the tens of millions of poor Filipinos. It had a segment called “One Time Big Time” in which lucky contestants could win huge amounts of cash.

In the first major One Time Big Time operation this week, police in Bulacan province neighbouring Manila reported killing 32 people on Monday night.

While human rights activists and other critics voiced outrage, Duterte quickly praised the police involved and urged more of the same.

“If we could kill another 32 everyday, then maybe we can reduce what ails this country,” Duterte said on Wednesday.

Police reported killing another 25 people that evening, then overnight Thursday and into the early hours of Friday an AFP team witnessed nine other bullet-riddled corpses in funeral parlours, inside slums or on nearby roads.

On one isolated road, a young man without shoes lay with bullet wounds to his head and stomach as a few policemen stood guard before crime scene investigators arrived. A pistol lay just near one of his hands.

One of the policemen said the dead man was a known drug trafficker and they were forced to shoot him in self defence.

Like in the vast majority of the “drug personality” killings, there were no reports of police being wounded or injured.

The investigators stayed for less than 30 minutes before the body was taken away and a police vehicle drove over the scene.

Even if the investigators did find the police account not to be true, Duterte has repeatedly promised to pardon officers if they are found guilty of murder in prosecuting his drug war.//AFP

Police said they killed five “suspected terrorists” during the night in the seaside town of Cambrils, 120 kilometres south of Barcelona where by-standers and police were injured in a second car attack.

Three others were arrested in other parts of the Catalonia region where both cities are located, but the driver responsible for the carnage in Barcelona remained at large, authorities warned.

The attacks are the latest in a wave of such assaults in Europe where vehicles have been used as weapons of terror.

In the Barcelona incident, claimed by the Islamic State group, a white van sped down a wide avenue packed full of tourists on Thursday afternoon, knocking people down and killing 13 in a scene of chaos and horror.

Spanish Policemen inspect a car after four suspected terrorists were killed by the police after they knocked down six civilians with their car at Paseo Maritimo in Cambrils (Tarragona), northeastern Spain, 18 August 2017. EPA

The driver left the vehicle and fled on foot.

Some eight hours later in Cambrils, an Audi A3 car rammed into pedestrians, injuring six civilians — one of them critical — and a police officer, authorities said.

Gunfire ensued during which police killed the five attackers. Some were wearing what appeared to be explosive belts, although Catalan interior minister Joaquim Forn later said they were fake.

 – ‘United in grief’ –

Witnesses in Barcelona recounted how bodies were strewn along the famous Las Ramblas boulevard where the driver went on a rampage as other people fled for their lives, screaming in panic.

As world leaders united in condemning the carnage, the IS propaganda agency Amaq claimed that it was carried out by “soldiers” from the jihadist group.

Police announced the arrest of three suspects, including a Spaniard and a Moroccan.

Carles Puigdemont, president of the region of Catalonia where both cities are located, warned the suspect still on the run was potentially dangerous, saying “these types of people have already demonstrated they have the will to harm whatever happens.”

There were at least 18 nationalities among the Barcelona victims who came from countries as varied as France, Venezuela, Australia, Ireland, Peru, Algeria and China, according to Spain’s civil protection agency.

Belgium said one of its citizens had died in the Las Ramblas assault, while the France’s foreign minister said 26 French nationals were injured, 11 seriously, The Hague said three Dutch were injured and a Greek diplomat reported three nationals had been wounded — a woman and her two children.

“We’re united in grief,” Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said in a televised address after rushing to Barcelona, the biggest city in Catalonia, a region in Spain’s northeast whose separatist government is defying Madrid with a drive for independence.

 – ‘Whole street started to run’ –

Las Ramblas is one of Barcelona’s busiest streets, lined with shops and restaurants and normally packed with tourists and street performers until well into the night.

“When it happened I ran out and saw the damage,” local shop worker Xavi Perez told AFP.

“There were bodies on the ground with people crowding round them. People were crying. There were lots of foreigners.”.

In Cambrils, meanwhile, Markel Artabe, a 20-year-old restaurant worker, said he was on the seaside promenade when he heard what he initially thought were fireworks, but soon realised were gunshots.

He said he saw a person lying on the floor “with a gunshot in the head. His friends were crying out ‘help’.”

– Europe’s deadliest attack –

Spain, the world’s third most popular tourism destination, had until now been spared the kind of extremist violence that has rocked nearby France, Belgium and Germany.

It had even seen a surge in tourists as visitors fled other restive sunshine destinations like Tunisia and Egypt.

But it is no stranger to jihadist attacks, having been hit by what is still Europe’s deadliest in March 2004, when bombs exploded on commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people in an attack claimed by Al Qaeda-inspired extremists.

It also had to deal with a decades-long campaign of violence waged by Basque separatist group ETA, which only declared a ceasefire in 2011.

Police said Thursday that one of the arrested suspects in the Barcelona attack was a Spaniard born in Melilla, a Spanish territory in North Africa, and the other a Moroccan named as Driss Oukabir.

In a further twist, the Spaniard was arrested in Alcanar, about 200 kilometres south of Barcelona, the scene of an explosion in a house late Wednesday that left one person dead and seven wounded and is believed to be linked to Thursday’s assault.

“We suspect that they (the occupants) were preparing an explosive device,” Josep Lluis Trapero of the regional Catalonia police told reporters.

– ‘Revolting attack’ –

======================

Thursday’s attack drew condemnation from across the globe, from US President Donald Trump to French leader Emmanuel Macron, whose country has witnessed a series of bloody jihadist atrocities including a truck rampage in Nice in July 2016 that killed 86 people.

The Nice carnage and other assaults including the 2015 shootings and bombings on Paris nightspots were claimed by the Islamic State, but it is believed to be the first IS claim of an attack in Spain.

Catalonia has the highest concentration of radicalised Islamists in the country along with Madrid and the Spanish territories of Ceuta and Melilla that border Morocco.

Among those being disciplined from the crew of the USS Fitzgerald are its commanding officer, executive officer and senior enlisted sailor, who will all be relieved of their duties aboard the ship, said Admiral Bill Moran, the vice chief of naval operations.

“They will be detached from the ship for cause, which (means) we’ve lost trust and confidence for their ability to lead in those positions and they will not return to the ship,” Moran told reporters.

Seven sailors drowned in their sleeping berth when the USS Fitzgerald collided with the Philippine-flagged ACX Crystal in a busy shipping channel off Japan’s coast early on June 17.

Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin, who heads the Navy’s 7th Fleet, based in Yokosuka, Japan has notified one sailor of his or her punishment and the rest would likely be informed by the end of Friday.

About a dozen sailors are expected to be disciplined in total.

“If it’s clear to (Aucoin) that some members of that crew should no longer be doing this line of work, it’s time to move them on, it’s time to take accountability actions,” Moran said.

Moran said the sailors could face further punishments later one, depending on the outcome of various ongoing probes.

“I’m not telling they will or they won’t. It’s just we are not done with the investigation,” Moran said.

‘Heroic’ actions

Aged 19 to 37, the drowned seamen were found by divers in flooded sleeping quarters a day after the collision tore a huge gash in the side of the Fitzgerald.

Moran spoke to Pentagon reporters just as the Navy released findings from a preliminary inquiry into what happened in the immediate aftermath of the crash.

The report found that all seven victims died in the line of duty and their deaths were not due to any misconduct on their part.

Investigators praised the quick-thinking and “heroic” actions of sailors who worked to save shipmates, one of whom had to be dragged from his bunk in a flooding sleeping area as waters quickly rose.

One sailor who was rescued moments before he would have drowned reported that “when taking his final breath before being saved, he was already submerged and breathed in water.”

Additionally, the report describes how the ship’s commanding officer was injured when the merchant ship Crystal struck his cabin, trapping him inside.

Fellow sailors had to smash and pry his door open before retrieving the commander, who was “hanging from the side of the ship. The officer was eventually medically evacuated by helicopter.

Moran praised the actions of the drowned sailors. The last of them to be buried was laid to rest Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetrey outside Washington.//AFP

– Spain –

=========

The Spanish royal family issued an unusually strongly-worded statement: They are assassins, criminals who won’t terrorise us. All of Spain is Barcelona.”

FC Barcelona said it was “deeply saddened” by the tragedy and the team’s talismanic striker Lionel Messi said separately that people must reject “any act of violence”.

“There are many more of us who want to live in a world in peace, without hate and where respect and tolerance are the basis of coexistence,” he added.

– United States –

=================

President Donald Trump tweeted: “The United States condemns the terror attack in Barcelona, Spain, and will do whatever is necessary to help. Be tough & strong, we love you!”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson added: “Terrorists around the world should know — the United States and our allies are resolved to find you and bring you to justice.”

– Germany –

===========

In a statement, the office of German Chancellor Angela Merkel said they were thinking of the victims of the “revolting attack” with “profound sadness”.

– Russia –

==========

President Vladimir Putin called for the world to unite in an “uncompromising battle against the forces of terror”.

“We decisively condemn this cruel and cynical crime against civilians,” Putin wrote in a telegram of condolences to Spanish King Felipe VI.

– United Nations –

==================

A spokesman said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres “condemns today’s terrorist attack on Barcelona” and “hopes that those responsible for this heinous violence will be swiftly brought to justice.”

– European Union –

==================

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said: “I send my deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims, as well as to Prime Minister Rajoy and the people of Spain. My thoughts are with the people of Barcelona.”

– France –

==========

President Emmanuel Macron voiced “France’s solidarity” with Spanish citizens following what he called “a tragic attack”.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said: “Parisians are at your side. Barcelona and Paris are cities that share love and tolerance. Our values are much stronger than this heinous and cowardly act of terrorism”.

– Britain –

===========

British Prime Minister Theresa May tweeted: “My thoughts are with the victims of today’s terrible attack in Barcelona … and the emergency services responding to this ongoing incident. The UK stands with Spain against terror.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan called the attack “barbaric”, adding: “London stands with Barcelona against the evil of terrorism.”

– The Netherlands –

===================

It was a “cowardly attack against innocent people,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte said in a statement on his Facebook page, calling it a “black day at a place where many people around the world gathered.”

– Turkey –

==========

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey strongly condemned the “heinous terrorist attack”.

– The Vatican –

===============

Pope Francis’s spokesman said in a statement: “The Pope prays for the victims of this attack and wishes to express his closeness to all the Spanish people, especially the wounded and families of the victims.”

– Portugal –

============

Footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, a star with Spanish premier club Real Madrid, said he was “dismayed” by the attack and voiced “support and solidarity with the families and friends of the victims”.