The World · 2026-07-18

policy & law

Europe's top court backs Spain's amnesty for Catalan separatists¹

The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on 16 July that Spain's 2024 amnesty for the Catalan independence movement does not breach EU law, clearing figures such as Carles Puigdemont, in exile in Belgium since 2017, to return home.¹ The Court held that the amnesty, adopted by Madrid in June 2024, pursues a legitimate objective, "to reduce institutional and political tensions and to facilitate a scenario for reconciliation," falls within Spain's own competence, and neither harms the EU's financial interests nor weakens its counter-terrorism law.¹ Bloomberg read the twin judgments in cases C-523/24 and C-666/24 as a win for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, whose government leans on Catalan votes in parliament.² Puigdemont called the outcome a "resounding victory" that "leaves no loophole," but the ruling hands the next move back to Spanish judges. The Catalan daily ARA read the two limits the Court flagged in the amnesty law — a two-month deadline for judges to resolve its application, and the suspension of precautionary measures until the questions referred to Luxembourg were settled — as already spent, since the law took effect in 2024, leaving the amnesty's reach to the courts' own discretion.³

world

Japan enshrines male-only imperial succession in its first rewrite of the 1947 law⁴

Japan's Diet enacted the first substantive revision of its Imperial House Law since 1947, the House of Councillors giving final passage on 17 July after the House of Representatives approved the bill on 10 July.⁴ The revision aims to slow the shrinking of the imperial family toward a single line of heirs: it lets the house re-adopt male, paternal-line descendants of eleven former imperial branches cut loose in 1947, allows female members to keep imperial status after marrying commoners, and makes an adoptee's sons eligible to succeed.⁴ Succession itself stays male-only, so Emperor Naruhito's daughter Aiko, 24 and, the Associated Press reports, hugely popular in surveys that favor a female emperor, remains ineligible.⁵ Critics read the change as built to keep her off the throne, and it may deepen the instability it targets: Shingo Haketa, a former head of the Imperial Household Agency, told Kyodo that the monarchy after the young Prince Hisahito is "extremely unstable."⁵ Jiji Press, marking the first rewrite in 79 years, reported that the Constitutional Democratic Party, the Communists and others voted against; Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, Japan's first woman in the post, backs male-only succession.⁶

economy & finance

Cheaper gasoline drags June retail sales to a soft 0.2%⁷

American retail and food-services sales rose just 0.2% in June, to $768.6 billion, with the softness sitting almost entirely at the gas pump, where cheaper fuel cut station sales 5.3%.⁷ Strip out gasoline and sales rose 0.7%; the "control group" that feeds the GDP estimate rose 0.5%, and the total ran 6.7% above a year earlier.⁷ The same morning, the Labor Department reported initial jobless claims of 208,000 for the week ending 11 July, down 8,000 and a five-week low, with the four-week average at 214,250.⁸ Reuters, filing through Capital Brief, read the pairing as a consumer cooling at the headline while the labor market stays tight, claims having come in below the roughly 217,000 forecast.⁹ Babypips set the retail numbers beside a same-day jump in Philadelphia Fed factory sentiment, cooling in some corners and running hot in others.¹⁰

health & science

Belgium's June heatwave becomes its deadliest on record at about 2,000 excess deaths¹¹

Belgium's public-health institute, Sciensano, revised the toll from June's heatwave up to about 2,000 on 17 July, from an initial 1,747, making it the country's deadliest heat episode since national mortality records began in 2000.¹¹ The figure is an excess-death count, deaths above the level its be-MOMO monitor would expect for the season, and the revision reflects delayed death registrations and a monitoring window stretched to 3 July, with the excess holding near 48%.¹¹ Public broadcaster VRT, reporting the initial tally, put the worst day at 27 June, when 641 people died, 146.5% above the expected baseline, though the regional breakdown shifted between the two releases and is best read as unsettled.¹² Sciensano attributes the severity to three things at once, the heatwave's duration, its temperature intensity, and high ozone, the Brussels Times reported.¹³

wildcard

A magnitude-7.4 quake off Chiapas rattles Central America without a death¹⁴

A magnitude-7.4 earthquake struck the subduction zone off Chiapas, in southern Mexico, at about 14:48 UTC on 17 July, on the shallow interface where the Cocos plate dives beneath Central America.¹⁴ The U.S. Geological Survey put the rupture at roughly 10 kilometers deep and 71 kilometers off Puerto Madero, near the southern end of the magnitude-8.2 quake that killed dozens along this coast in 2017.¹⁴ It shook Guatemala, El Salvador and parts of Mexico City and set off a Pacific tsunami alert that was later lifted; President Claudia Sheinbaum said that after speaking with the governors of Chiapas and Tabasco she had no reports of deaths or major damage.¹⁵ Mexico News Daily, reporting from the ground, counted roughly eighty aftershocks by midday, the largest at magnitude 6.5, and two injuries in Tapachula.¹⁶ A rupture this size near the source of the 2017 disaster could have been catastrophic. What it left was cracked walls, gas leaks and those two injuries.

Europe's top court backs Spain's amnesty for Catalan separatists1

Japan enshrines male-only imperial succession in its first rewrite of the 1947 law4

Cheaper gasoline drags June retail sales to a soft 0.2%7

Belgium's June heatwave becomes its deadliest on record at about 2,000 excess deaths11

A magnitude-7.4 quake off Chiapas rattles Central America without a death14

Sources

Europe's top court backs Spain's amnesty for Catalan separatists¹

Japan enshrines male-only imperial succession in its first rewrite of the 1947 law⁴

Cheaper gasoline drags June retail sales to a soft 0.2%⁷

Belgium's June heatwave becomes its deadliest on record at about 2,000 excess deaths¹¹

A magnitude-7.4 quake off Chiapas rattles Central America without a death¹⁴