Madrid

It is indisputably one of the world’s more original languages. For more than half a millennium, the inhabitants of the Spanish Canary Island of La Gomera have communicated over steep slopes and isolated valleys by whistling. Now the whistle language, known as Silbo, has aroused the interest of scientists.

A suspected Islamist linked to the Madrid train bombings on March 11 says Spain was targeted because of its support for the United States in Iraq, local media reported on Friday. The former conservative government denied that Spain’s war alliance with the US had turned it into a terrorist target.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Monday proposed an international pact against Islamist terrorism. He was addressing a parliamentary commission investigating the Madrid train bombings. Meanwhile, a Spanish judge on Monday was to question an alleged mastermind of the train bombings.

Seven bombs went off in as many Spanish cities on Monday within the space of half an hour, slightly injuring five people, after anonymous callers claiming to speak for the underground Basque separatist group ETA told a Basque newspaper to expect the explosions.

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.

Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade has launched an urgent appeal to fight West Africa’s worst locust plague in 15 years, the Spanish daily El Pais said on Tuesday. Wade spoke to journalists during a visit to the cultural festival Forum 2004 in Barcelona.

He had to change his tires 11 times and once fell to the ground and spent the night in a ditch. But a Russian amputee, Vladimir Ksenchak (65), finally rolled into Madrid on Tuesday after a 5 000km wheelchair trip designed to inspire the disabled and to denounce drugs.

Two people burnt to death after their car was engulfed in a huge forest fire in Spain, officials said on Wednesday as firefighters battled blazes in many parts of sweltering southern Europe. Portugal appealed for more help from its European partners and in France authorities said they had succeeded in containing a large blaze.

Spain’s Parliament may approve same-sex marriages early next year, Justice Minister Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar said on Wednesday. If the law is approved, it will make Spain the third European country to recognise gay marriages after The Netherlands and Belgium.

The Spanish government is considering monitoring mosques and imams to curb Islamic extremism blamed for the March 11 terror bombings in Madrid, the foreign minister said on Monday. ”We can require of the imam … that it be known what he is going to say in the mosque,” said Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso.

Spain said on Monday it had arrested two more men linked to the Madrid train bombings after a weekend raid in which the alleged mastermind of the attacks and four accomplices blew themselves up. Police further tightened security on public transport, airports and strategic sites including nuclear reactors.

Police found a bomb on Friday on a high-speed rail line between Madrid and Seville, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said. Bomb-disposal experts alerted by a railway employee found 10kg to 12kg of explosives, possibly dynamite, under a track about 60km south of Madrid on the route to the southern city of Seville.

A Spanish judge issued five international arrest warrants on Wednesday for suspects in the Madrid train bombings and re-arrested a Moroccan suspect, a court official said. Judge Juan del Olmo was forwarding the warrants to authorities in Britain, Morocco and France.

Examining Judge Juan del Olmo on Friday began questioning two suspects linked to the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, judicial sources said. The sources said Del Olmo was interrogating Faisal Alluch and Khalid Oulad Akcha, arrested last weekend with two other suspects. The four are all Moroccan nationals.

Political leaders from around Europe joined the Spanish royal family on Wednesday in attending an emotionally charged mass for the 190 identified victims of the March 11 bombings in Madrid — amid fears that similar terror could strike other capitals.

The South African Foreign Affairs department said on Thursday afternoon that ”no-one from South Africa has died in Equatorial Guinea” after Spanish newspapers reported that a SA mercenary suspected of plotting a coup in that country had been tortured to death.

At least 190 people were killed and more than 1 000 injured early on Thursday in near-simultaneous explosions on trains in Madrid at the height of morning commuter traffic — only 72 hours ahead of Spanish general elections. Thirteen bombs were planted around Madrid and 10 exploded, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said.

Spanish doctors have amputated an injured arm, attached it to the patient’s groin for nine days, and replanted it on its stump in an unprecedented operation, news reports said on Thursday. The operation was the first in the world in which a reattached limb was amputated in order to join it with another part of the body.

Former United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said on Spanish radio in Madrid on Monday that at no point had he ever said that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The Spanish government based its justification for supporting the war in Iraq on UN claims that Iraq possessed the weapons.

Meteorologists in Spain on Monday warned against further severe rainfall and storms following a weekend in which six people died in severe weather conditions. Forecasters predicted additional rainfall of up to 100 litre per square metre and snow at levels above 600m.