Sinikka Tarvainen
No image available
/ 30 October 2006

How the Mediterranean is turning into a barren sea

For millennia, the Mediterranean has fed its coastal peoples with abundant fish, but now it threatens to become a barren sea. Overfishing is taking a heavy toll on fish stocks, with the numbers of tuna plummeting and anchovy becoming scarce in the western Mediterranean. ”Many species are becoming increasingly rare,” says Alain Bonzon, secretary general of a commission monitoring fishing in the Mediterranean.

No image available
/ 1 September 2006

Oil companies look to Spain for black gold

As Europe seeks to reduce dependence on the unstable Middle East’s oil reserves, it is not only looking to continents such as Africa or Latin America, but also to its own soil to ensure supplies. Several companies are investigating the possibilities of starting or increasing oil production in Spain, an insignificant producer so far.

No image available
/ 10 August 2005

Sahara crosses into Portugal and Spain

Rivers run low, crops wither, livestock starve to death and wildfires rage on the Iberian peninsula in the grip of a devastating drought that makes it look like the Sahara is reaching out across the Mediterranean. The peninsula’s fiercest drought in 60 years is seen as a further sign of desertification in the region.

No image available
/ 11 April 2005

Scientists amazed by crocodiles in Sahara

Crocodiles living in the Sahara sounds like fiction, but Spanish scientists are investigating such a group in southern Mauritania. The reptiles are regarded as the last remains of the abundant crocodile population that roamed the Sahara before it dried up about 9 000 years ago. The group of a few dozen crocodiles subsists at a pond near the Senegalese border.

No image available
/ 17 November 2004

Maria Gomez and the faces of Belmez

One day in 1971, when Spanish farmer Miguel Pereira Gomez came home from the fields, he noticed something strange on the floor of the family house. ”It is a face,” his mother said. Since then, the village of Belmez near the southern city of Jaen has become something of a pilgrimage site for people interested in paranormal phenomena.