BBC news with Jim Lee.
In Spain, one and a half million Catalans are marching through Barcelona to demand independence for their autonomous region. Demonstrators fill the city center waving red and yellow flags and chanting "Catalonia, a new European country". Alfred Bosch, a member of the Catalan regional assembly, told the BBC that he had never seen so many pro-independence marchers in his life. Tom Burridge is at the rally.
This year, calls for independence for the Spanish region in the far northeast of the country have added potency. Because both the Spanish and regional Catalonia economies are in crisis. Some economists say that the Catalan government has barely enough money to pay public sector workers here, and therefore, Catalonia has asked the Spanish central government for a bailout to 5bn euros. The Catalan government argues the central government in Madrid owns it that money because it pays much more in taxes than it gets back in funding from the Spanish government. And many here on the streets of Barcelona want that agreement renegotiated.
The family of a young Pakistani Christian girl named Rimsha, who faces blasphemy charges, say their Muslim neighbors threaten to murder them. Speaking to the BBC from a secret location outside Islamabad, Rimsha's father said he feared for their lives. They were saying we are going to burn you inside the house; we are not going to spare you or your kids. Then we will burn the homes of the other Christians. Rimsha's accused of burning pages of the Koran but the cleric, who had accused her, was arrested last week for allegedly planting evidence against her and himself desecrating the Koran. Rimsha was released on bail but still faces trial.