Spanish Banks Mull Merger Under Continued Debt Crisis

Spanish savings banks Ibercaja, Liberbank and Caja3, are mulling a merger to strengthen their balance sheets as Spain’s debt crisis continues to sting the economy. The banks said their boards would meet on Tuesday to vote on the merger. While Caja3 is the result of a three-way merger of regional savings banks, Liberbank emerged after a four-way merger. The Spanish property crash has forced a wave of mergers upon the Spanish banking sector as it...

Spain Set For Deeper Slump As Retail Sales Drop

Retail sales drop at fastest pace in more than eight years -- Jan-April budget deficit at 2.4% of GDP due to one-offs -- Central bank warns of second quarter economic contraction -- Ratings agency Egan-Jones cuts Spain to B From BB- MADRID -- Spain's economy showed fresh strain Tuesday as retail sales fell at a record pace in April, showing the government's austerity program is strangling consumption and suggesting deepening recession. Data...

Spain's economy on cliff edge as bank's shares dive

Spanish 10-year borrowing costs neared the 7% danger level and Bankia shares hit record lows yesterday after the government, struggling to sort out its finances, proposed putting sovereign debt into the struggling lender.  Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy pinned the blame for rising borrowing costs - the spread over Germany reached the highest since the euro's launch - on concern about the future of the single currency. He again ruled out seeking...

Spain's Beloved Four-Day Weekends Are At Risk

One of the perks of living in Europe is the generous vacation schedule. But the austerity moves across the continent could be changing that, at least in some places. Portugal, for example, recently cut four of its 14 annual holidays. And Spain is shuffling its calendar to shorten extended weekends — something the prime minister says it can no longer afford. The change could mean the loss of a celebrated tradition: the four-day weekend. A Holiday...

Spain Hit By Fears on Banks

Fears about a potentially messy Greek exit from the euro zone washed up on Spain's shores on Monday, pulling local stock prices to lows not seen in eight and a half years as the country's borrowing costs continued to soar. Analysts warned that the ripples of a Greek exit would be stronger in vulnerable economies like Spain's, whose companies, banks and government rely heavily on foreign funding. Those flags came amid ongoing concerns about Spain's...

complaint was filed May 8, against Carlos Divar, President of the Supreme Court of Spain, on the grounds of having paid out of public funds, luxury travel.

The daily El Mundo and El Pais, in their editions of Wednesday, May 9, 2012, reveal that a complaint was filed May 8, against Carlos Divar, President of the Supreme Court of Spain, on the grounds of having paid out of public funds, luxury travel.  The representative of...

Brink's Mat the reason that Great Train Robber was shot dead in Marbella

The Brink’s-Mat curse even touched on the Great Train Robbery gang of 1963. One of them, Charlie Wilson, found himself in trouble when £3 million of Brink’s-Mat investors’ money went missing in a drug deal. In April 1990, he paid the price when a young British hood knocked on the front door of his hacienda north of Marbella and shot Wilson and his pet husky dog before coolly riding off down the hill on a yellow bicyc...

British tourist falls to her death from hotel balcony in Magalluf

23 year old British tourist has fallen to her death from the third floor balcony of her hotel in Magalluf, Mallorca. Emergency sources said it happened at 4.25am Saturday morning at the Hotel Teix in Calle Pinada. Local police and emergency health services went to scene. After 20 minutes of an attempt to re-animate her heart, the woman was pronounced dead. Online descriptions for the Hotel say it is the best place to stay of you are looking for...

Four of the last reporters and photographers willing to cover crime stories have been slain in less than a week in violence-torn Veracruz state

Four of the last reporters and photographers willing to cover crime stories have been slain in less than a week in violence-torn Veracruz state, where two Mexican drug cartels are warring over control of smuggling routes and targeting sources of independent information. The brutal campaign is bleeding the media and threatening to turn Veracruz into the latest state in Mexico where fear snuffs out reporting on the drug war. Three photojournalists...

Greek far-right parties could end up with as much as 20 percent of the vote in Sunday's elections. The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party has intensified the xenophobic atmosphere in the country.

At night, the streets leading to Omonoia Square are empty. That wasn't always the case. The area was the premier multicultural neighborhood of Athens and one of the first quarters to be gentrified. Jazz bars and Indian restaurants lined the streets, separated by the occasional rooms-by-the-hour hotel. It was a quarter full of immigrants, drug addicts and African prostitutes, but also of journalists, ambitious young artists and teenagers from private...

Locked Up Abroad is different.

Reality TV is, at its core, about letting viewers revel in the bad decision-making of others: those who speak without thinking, who backstab, who have sex without condoms, who cheat. Frustratingly, though, reality shows—to which I am unapologetically addicted—tend to reward bad behavior, by giving its villains notoriety, spinoffs, opportunities to endorse weight-loss products, a nice sideline in paid interviews with supermarket tabloids, and other...

Low fare airline bmibaby to close

Low fare carrier bmibaby is set to close later this year, threatening the loss of hundreds of jobs and the ending of its flights. The carrier transferred to International Airlines Group, the owners of British Airways, last month, but consultations have now started with unions about its closure in September. The GMB union said it was "devastating" news, especially for the East Midlands, where hundreds of jobs are now threatened with the axe. With...