Spanish protests mobilize masses for political renewal

Spain's one-month-old protest movement was Monday seen as gathering momentum, after more than 200,000 people took to the streets around the country.The movement demanding democratic reforms had demonstrated its capacity to peacefully mobilize large numbers of people, and could no longer be ignored by political and economic leaders, commentators said.Demonstrations were held in about 60 cities Sunday to demand profound changes to the current political...

Spain Hires RBS to Privatize Airports

The Spanish government said Monday that it selected Royal Bank of Scotland PLC to coordinate the privatization of the country's airports, in the latest step to shed state-owned assets and cut spending to narrow Spain's hefty budget gap.Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero announced a plan last year to privatize Madrid's Barajas and Barcelona's El Prat airports and sell a stake in AENA Aeropuertos, the world's largest airport group...

Four Spanish soldiers and an interpreter have been injured in Afghanistan in an attack on a ‘Lince’ Spanish armoured vehicle.

The Ministry for Defence says that two of the injured from the light infantry regiments Soria Nº9 and Palma Nº47, lieutenant A,G,B and soldier J.G.L. have each had one of their legs amputated. Soldier A.Q.S. suffered injuries including a broken leg and has undergone surgery with two others in the Role 2 Hospital in Bala Marghab. Some of the injured are expected to be transferred to hospital in Kandahar.They were travelling with a Lince armoured vehicle...

Spain is expelling the Libyan ambassador to Madrid and three other Libyan diplomats

Spain is expelling the Libyan ambassador to Madrid and three other Libyan diplomats here, the Spanish Foreign Ministry said in a statement Thursday."The government of Spain has decided to put an end to the mission of the ambassador accredited in Madrid by the authorities in Tripoli (Libya), because the Gadhafi regime has lost all legitimacy due to its continual repression of the Libyan population," the statement said.The Libyan ambassador to Madrid,...

Spain's indignant protesters rise up against home repossessions

Spain's peaceful "indignant" protest movement, which saw its image tarnished by outbursts of violence in Barcelona this week, has turned its attention to stopping banks from repossessing people's homes.On Thursday morning a crowd gathered outside the home of 74-year-old Luis Domínguez, in the Madrid dormitory town of Parla, and prevented court officials from serving him with the order to leave his home immediately.Domínguez, who walks with crutches...

Hussein Salem, a close business associate of ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, wanted by Egypt on corruption charges, has been arrested in Spain

Egyptian businessman Hussein Salem - who has been on the run since last February – was detained in Spain on Thursday on an international arrest warrant issued by Interpol and is set to be deported to Egypt to stand trial.“Hussein Salem is detained in Spain. He has been arrested in his villa at Majorca and we will send all the documents to the Spanish authorities in order to bring him back to Egypt to face trial,” Major General Magdy El-Shafie, Director...

Arrested a 70 year old man for trying to abduct two girls in a shopping mall

A man in his 70 years has been arrested for allegedly trying to take two girls in the Rose Garden shopping center. Initially, you will be charged an alleged illegal detention, The incident occurred around seven pm on Tuesday. The two children aged between five and seven years, were at the establishment with an aunt. At one point, taking advantage of the two girls were alone, the suspect approached them and would have asked them to leave with...

June 13th is the Day for Prevention of skin cancer

June 13th is the Day for Prevention of skin cancer, a malignant tumor that will face one in five Spanish throughout his life and whose incidence has increased "significantly" in recent years, say dermatologists, to display "concerned" about the situation.Skin cancer in Spain has increased "substantially", especially in the last 15 or 20 years, so "concerned" to specialists who have worked to reverse this increase and have gotten better diagnostic...

The jobless rate for people under 25 in Spain is 44 percent - the highest in the European Union

While in many European countries, the level of unemployment among people from 15 and 24 is well above the national average, young people in Spain are particularly frustrated.The jobless rate for people under 25 in Spain is 44 percent - the highest in the European Union. Many young people in Spain feel like they belong to a "lost generation" that is bearing the brunt of a crisis that wasn't of their making.In Madrid, Barcelona,...

Health officials in Germany said Friday that bean sprouts caused the E. coli outbreak, as earlier suspected.

Health officials in Germany said Friday that bean sprouts caused the E. coli outbreak, as earlier suspected. The head of Germany's disease control agency said the pattern of the outbreak pointed to the sprouts as the cause. After the announcement, Russia said it will lift its ban on European Union vegetables in return for EU safety guarantees. An earlier story follows.___This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.European agriculture ministers...

Russia says it will lift its ban on European Union vegetables imposed in the wake of the deadly E. coli outbreak.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso made the joint announcement Friday following a two-day Russia-EU summit in the central Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod.The EU is to provide Moscow with documents certifying the vegetables' safety.German public health officials say new data show that contaminated sprouts are the source of the outbreak, which has killed at least 30 people and sickened nearly 3,000 others. ...

Barclays boss Bob Diamond eyes a gamble on Spain

Not for the first time, Bob Diamond is displaying a gambler’s instinct at a time of crisis.Faced with severe and mounting losses in Spain, the boss of Barclays has so far resisted the urge to cut and run.Instead, he’s looking increasingly eager to double his bets through a takeover of one of the Mediterranean nation’s most troubled mutual lenders.If the past experience is anything to go by, the American will have sewn up a deal for the Caja del Mediterraneo...

Spain has already estimated its own growers have lost 200 million euros in sales in the week since Germany initially blamed the outbreak on Spanish cucumbers.

European Union will propose offering at least 150 million euros ($219 million) in compensation to farmers affected by the E.coli outbreak, the European commissioner for agriculture said on Tuesday.Arriving for a meeting of EU agriculture ministers in Luxembourg, Dacian Ciolos said the money would go to growers of fresh vegetables such as tomatoes, lettuces and cucumbers whose businesses have been affected by the outbreak of the disease in Germany...

head of a German farm facing an inquiry over a deadly E.coli outbreak has denied that bean sprouts grown at his farm could be to blame.

Klaus Verbeck, managing director of the "Gaertnerhof Bienenbuettel", told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung that no fertilisers are used to produce his bean sprouts and that there are no animals on his organic farm.German officials said on Sunday his bean sprouts could be behind an E.coli outbreak that has killed 22 and made more than 2,200 people ill across Europe. The farm has been shut, produce recalled and further test results are due on Monday."I...

German beansprouts likely cause of E. coli outbreak

Blame for the deadly outbreak of E. coli in Europe has fallen on bean sprouts from northern Germany, the likely culprits in thousands of poisonings that have killed at least 22 people."Bean sprouts have been identified as the product that likely caused the outbreak," said Gert Hahne, spokesman for the German ministry of agriculture. "Many restaurants that suffered from an E. coli outbreak had those sprouts delivered."Authorities had previously eyed...

The E. coli outbreak concentrated in northern Germany has spread to 11 other countries, including the U.S.

The E. coli outbreak concentrated in northern Germany has spread to 11 other countries, including the U.S., the World Health Organization said Friday, amid increasing concern about the new strain's virulence.The German government said a "European solution" will be found to compensate vegetable growers and traders who have suffered losses as consumers avoid raw vegetables and salads.By Thursday, 1,122 cases of enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli had...

Qatar has banned the import of cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce from Spain

Qatar has banned the import of cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce from Spain and Germany amid an E. coli outbreak that has killed 19 people.The Supreme Council of Health (SCH) said it decided to impose a temporary ban on the three products, but would not "hesitate to ban all vegetables from all European countries if necessary", an official said, Qatari media reported.All but one of the fatalities since the outbreak of enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC)...

ANGRY farmers will hit the European Commission with huge claims for compensation in the wake of E.coli panic

ANGRY farmers will hit the European Commission with huge claims for compensation in the wake of E.coli panic crippling the fruit and vegetable industry on the Continent.Spanish and Dutch growers have been hardest hit, losing hundreds of millions of pounds in revenue since the outbreak of a mutant strain of the deadly food poisoning bug in northern Germany three weeks ago.The epidemic has left 18 dead and nearly 2,000 people desperately ill. Four...

Spain to Clamp Down on File-Sharers

A bill that would allow Spain’s authorities to close down illegal websites with limited judicial oversight has caused anger among the country’s Internet users.The law, known as Sinde’s bill (after the current culture minister Ángeles González-Sinde) is designed to close the loophole that sharing sites such as Roja Directa have exploited.If you go to the website today, you will find a pithy warning against Internet piracy, courtesy of the U.S. authorities....

Spain cracks down on bank interest rate war

Spain's government Friday announced a crackdown on a war between commercial banks offering ever higher deposit rates in a cut-throat battle for customers.The government introduced a new regime to curb the competition, fearing it may further damage profits at Spain's banks, many of them still mopping up the bad loans from an exploded property bubble.Under the new rules, banks are encouraged not to offer interest rates too far above the eurozone's...

Spain's king in hospital for knee op

Spain's widely loved 73-year-old king, Juan Carlos I, entered hospital Friday for surgery on his painful right knee, the royal household said.The operation to restore movement and reduce pain in the knee is known as artheroplasty and can involve a complete joint replacement, but the palace has given no further details."His Majesty the King entered the San Jose Clinic of the city of Madrid at 7.50 am (0550 GMT) where during the morning an artheroplasty...

Germany, Spain Agree to Seek Aid for Farmers

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero have agreed that Germany and Spain will try to get aid on a European Level for farmers affected by the deadly Escherichia coli outbreak in Germany.Ms. Merkel, in a phone call to Mr. Zapatero Thursday, expressed her understanding about the economic stress that the Spanish vegetable sector has come under due to consumer backlash related to the outbreak, a German...

Several large Spanish banks have reportedly been financing the manufacture of cluster bombs.

As more NATO bombs rain down on Libya, it has come to light that companies from one NATO member state have been supplying banned bombs to Muammar Gaddafi. Several large Spanish banks have reportedly been financing the manufacture of cluster bombs.In just one strike, each cluster bomb can spread up to 2,000 smaller explosives, called “bomblets”, over a wide area. Fired into populated areas, they almost guarantee civilian deaths. This is why 57 countries...

Spain's government said it may seek compensation from Germany

Spain's government said it may seek compensation from Germany on the grounds that Spanish vegetable exporters were unfairly blamed for a deadly outbreak of Escherichia coli, as European authorities said Spanish cucumbers weren't contaminated with an aggressive strain of the bacteria that is blamed for the deaths of 17 people in Northern Europe.The death toll rose to 17 on Wednesday from 16 after authorities determined a German woman's death Sunday...

Spain could launch legal action against Germany over accusations that Spanish cucumbers caused the E.coli outbreak

Spain could launch legal action against Germany over accusations that Spanish cucumbers caused the E.coli outbreak that has so far killed 16 people in Germany and one in Sweden.Spain's Deputy Prime Minister, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, said that the government in Madrid may issue a legal challenge to officials in the German port city of Hamburg, "who have questioned the quality of our products".Spain has complained that German authorities pointed the...

Spain's king lashes out at reporters

Spain's King Juan Carlos was visibly annoyed when reporters began inquiring about the state of his health, officials said.The subject of the king's health came up Tuesday at a meeting of the Business Confederation of Madrid at the La Zarzuela palace. Spanish reporters asked him about his health in light of an operation he had last year and his impending knee surgery Saturday at a Barcelona hospital, El Pais reported."You are determined to say that...

lenders can seize not just the house but all the assets of its owner that it needs to cover an unpaid mortgage debt.

“There’s a growing feeling that the banks have played a big part in the problems now facing Spain,” said del Rio, 37, who gathered with a throng of people in the town’s main square last week as protests that began May 15 swelled across the country. “There’s real anger with banks that got out of control.”A five-fold surge in bank lending in the decade up to 2007 has left its scars on customers as Spain’s property-fueled boom turned to bust, pushing...