The terror cell that killed 15 people and injured more than 130 in north-east Spain last week had created a suicide vest packed with viable explosives and were in the process of making several more when a blast ripped through their bomb factory, police have said. A search of the rubble at the factory in a disused house in Alcanar in southern Catalonia resulted in the discovery of the vest, which had gone unnoticed on Thursday last week when the blast was initially dismissed as an accidental gas explosion.

Questions are being asked about the Catalan police response to the blast, with sources close to the judicial investigation in Madrid suggesting they may have missed an opportunity to uncover the plot before the terrorists struck later that day in Barcelona.Quoting two sources close to the investigation in Madrid, Reuters news agency said an opportunity to uncover the plot may have been missed as a result of procedural errors and a lack of communication. No immediate decision was made to call explosives experts to the scene of the blast, and nor was information about it passed to the national police or Civil Guard headquarters in Madrid, according to the sources.(theguardian)…[+]

Theresa May admitted the Home Office made an “unfortunate error” when it mistakenly sent up to 100 letters to EU nationals living in the UK ordering them to leave the country or face deportation. The prime minister was forced into the statement after it emerged that a Finnish academic working in London had highlighted the warning letter she had received, which told her to leave the UK or risk being detained. Although Eva Johanna Holmberg has lived in the UK with her British husband for most of the last decade, the correspondence from the Home Office said that if she did not leave the country of her own accord the department would give “directions for [her] removal”. It added that she was “a person liable to be detained under the Immigration Act”.Holmberg, a visiting academic fellow from the University of Helsinki at Queen Mary University of London, was told that she had a month to leave, a demand that left her baffled. “It seems so surreal and absurd that I should be deported on the grounds that I’m not legal. I’ve been coming and going to this country for as long as I remember,” she said. “I don’t know what kind of image they have of me but it’s clearly quite sinister based on the small amount of info they actually have on me.”(theguardian)…[+]

Hillary Clinton considered telling Donald Trump “Back up, you creep!” during one of the presidential debates, adding, in the first extract from her new book, that “my skin crawled” when he invaded her personal space. In the comments, broadcast by MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday, Clinton recounts how uncomfortable she felt being on stage with Trump just two days after his infamous “pussy-grabbing” tape had been made public.

“This is not OK, I thought,” Clinton writes. “It was the second presidential debate, and Donald Trump was looming behind me. Two days before, the world heard him brag about groping women. Now we were on a small stage and no matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces. It was incredibly uncomfortable. He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled.”

Clinton continues: “It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching: ‘Well, what would you do?’ Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye, and say loudly and clearly: ‘Back up, you creep, get away from me! I know you love to intimidate women, but you can’t intimidate me, so back up.’”(theguardian)…[+]