Catalonia was an independent region of the Iberian Peninsula – modern day Spain and Portugal – with its own language, laws and customs.
The War of the Spanish Succession ended with the defeat of King of Catalonia in 1714, and finally with the last of the islands in 1715 – resulting in the birth of modern-day Spain.
Subsequent kings tried to impose the Spanish language and laws on the region, but they abandoned their attempts in 1931 and restored the Generalitat (the national Catalan government).
General Francisco Franco, however, set out to destroy Catalan separatism and with his victory at the Battle of Ebro in 1938 he took control of the region, killing 3,500 people and forcing many more into exile.
The region was granted a degree of autonomy once more in 1977, when democracy returned to the country.
Calls for complete independence grew steadily until July 2010, when the Constitutional Court in Madrid overruled part of the 2006 autonomy statute, stating that there is no legal basis for recognising Catalonia as a nation within Spain.
The economic crisis in Spainhas only served to magnify calls for Catalan independence – as the wealthy Barcelona region is seen as propping up the poorer rest of Spain.
The conservative Popular Party of Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, is only the fifth-largest party in Catalonia, and is strongly opposed to any moves for independence for the region.
The president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, is backed by a coalition of Catalan nationalist forces from the conservative CDC and the leftist Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) parties, which, together with the radical Left-wing CUP party, command a majority in the region’s parliament.
In September 2017, this majority approved the holding of a binding referendum on independence for Catalonia, but Spain’s constitutional court suspended the process.
The Catalan authorities went through with the vote, leading to violence inside and around polling stations as Spanish security forces seized ballot boxes and attempted to close down the vote. They said that 2.26 million votes had been counted, with 90 per cent in favour of independence.
Mr Puigdemont says the result is a mandate for a unilateral declaration of independence, although he says he would prefer to negotiate the terms of secession from Spain with the government in Madrid.
The Catalan region has long been the industrial heartland of Spain – first for its maritime power and trade in goods such as textiles, but recently for finance, services and hi-tech companies.
It is one of the wealthiest regions of Spain - it accounts for 19 per cent of Spain’s GDP, equal with the Madrid region. Madrid, however, has a higher per capita GDP, as do the Basque Country and Navarre regions.
Secession would therefore cost Spain almost 20 per cent of its economic output, and trigger a row about how Catalonia would return 52.5 billion euros of debt it owes to the country’s central administration.
It would have a gross domestic product of $314 billion (£195bn), according to calculations by the OECD, which would make it the 34th largest economy in the world. That would make it bigger than Portugal or Hong Kong.
Its GDP per capita would be $35,000, which would make it wealthier than South Korea, Israel or Italy.
And Catalonia's contribution to the Spanish economy is twice that of Scotland’s to the UK.
A root problem is that the demands of Madheshis are in direct opposition to the demands of two other groups, which puts Kathmandu in a quandary. Two Ethnic groups - the Tharu and the Kiranti - have been enforcing bandh ( a general strike / blockade ) and agitating for full autonomy from Kathmandu. Madheshis have had clashes with Tharu protestors in addition to government forces, yet all these groups accuse Kathmandu of ordering excessive use of force by the police.
On 20 September 2015, the long stalled Constitution of Nepal was passed with 90% approval from the representatives in Nepal's Constituent Assembly (CA). 66 members of Nepal's 598-strong Constituent Assembly, belonging to these groups, abstained from voting in protest
As a landlocked nation, Nepal imports all of its petroleum supplies from India. Roughly 300 fuel trucks enter from India on a normal day, but this has dwindled to a sporadic passage of 5–10 fuel trucks daily since the start of the crisis, though shipments of perishables like fruits and vegetables have generally been allowed to pass. Moreover, India had also been stopping some Nepalese trucks at the Kolkata harbour. The blockade choked imports of not only petroleum, but also medicines and earthquake relief material.
India however has denied involvement in supporting Madhesis or ordering a fuel blockade. It claims that the Madhesis were causing a blockade and not allowing fuel supplies to Nepal.
China however stepped in and has ended Indias total domination over fuel supply to Nepal. Nepali PM Oli also is seen as pro-china.
The conflict has its roots in the failure of a political transition supposed to bring stability to Yemen following an Arab Spring uprising that forced its longtime authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to hand over power to his deputy Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, in 2011.
President Hadi struggled to deal with a variety of problems, including attacks by al-Qaeda, a separatist movement in the south, the continuing loyalty of many military officers to Mr Saleh, as well as corruption, unemployment and food insecurity.
The Houthi movement, which champions Yemen's Zaidi Shia Muslim minority and fought a series of rebellions against Mr Saleh during the previous decade, took advantage of the new president's weakness by taking control of their northern heartland of Saada province and neighbouring areas.
Disillusioned with the transition, many ordinary Yemenis - including Sunnis - supported the Houthis and in late 2014 and early 2015, the rebels took over Sanaa. The president escaped to the southern port city of Aden the following month.
The Houthis and security forces loyal to Mr Saleh - who is thought to have backed his erstwhile enemies in a bid to regain power - then attempted to take control of the entire country, forcing Mr Hadi to flee abroad in March 2015.
Alarmed by the rise of a group they believed to be backed militarily by regional Shia power Iran, Saudi Arabia and eight other mostly Sunni Arab states began an air campaign aimed at restoring Mr Hadi's government. The coalition received logistical and intelligence support from the US, UK and France.
The Houthis meanwhile have not been dislodged from Sanaa, and have been able to maintain a siege of the southern city of Taiz and to fire mortars and missiles across the border with Saudi Arabia.
Jihadist militants from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and rival affiliates of the Islamic State group (IS) have taken advantage of the chaos by seizing territory in the south and carrying out deadly attacks, notably in Aden.
due to a missile attach over saudi arabia, it imposed a blockade over Yemen causing a food crisis and shortage of essential goods. Yemen is thus a classic case of Shia versus Sunni conflict seen in the middle east which is a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Yemen is strategically important because it sits on the Bab al-Mandab strait, a narrow waterway linking the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, through which much of the world's oil shipments pass.