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/ 12 February 2008
The first cellphones fitted with Google’s Android software platform made their debut at an industry trade show on Monday, a milestone for the internet giant as it looks to dominate the wireless world. A handful of chip makers showed off prototype handsets at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
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/ 4 February 2008
Spain could lose both of its Formula One races following the racist taunting of driver Lewis Hamilton by spectators over the weekend. Governing body the FIA said on Monday that the racial abuse aimed at Hamilton, Formula One’s first black driver, during testing at the Barcelona circuit could result in sanctions.
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/ 17 January 2008
Angel Gonzalez, one of Spain’s most prominent poets and member of a literary generation known for its opposition to the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, has died. He was 82. Gonzalez died on January 12 after being hospitalised with pneumonia.
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/ 16 January 2008
Nigeria coach Berti Vogts admits he will have a tough time holding on to his job unless his team shines in Ghana at the African Cup of Nations and preferably returns with a third title. ”The country is expecting us to win the title without conceding a goal,” said the 61-year-old.
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/ 14 January 2008
Cyberspace has welcomed a new, Wikipedia-style tool designed to help the world’s nearly 400-million Spanish-speakers consult on proper use of their language. The website, called Wikilengua was officially unveiled last Thursday at Casa de America, a cultural centre in Madrid that aims to symbolise and enhance Spain’s strong ties with Latin America.
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/ 18 December 2007
Spain’s government estimated on Tuesday that joint business between Spanish and Libyan firms should amount to more than -billion. Gadaffi’s visit focused on ”the interest of both countries to promote economic cooperation, telecommunications, tourism and even water management,” said the government.
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/ 10 December 2007
Spain’s double world champion Fernando Alonso ended speculation over his driving plans for the 2008 Formula One season on Monday by announcing his return to Renault. Alonso won his two titles in 2005 and 2006 with the French team before moving to McLaren, with whom he finished third in this year’s title race.
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/ 4 December 2007
Spain backed Britain on Tuesday in calling for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to stay away from a European Union-Africa summit in Lisbon this week. "We would all prefer that he does not take part because he will not bring much and he would be a media distraction," Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told reporters.
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/ 27 November 2007
Three would-be immigrants from Morocco tried to row across the Strait of Gibraltar on a surfboard in rough seas before they were picked up by a passing ferry, a Spanish newspaper said on Tuesday. The ferry was 20 minutes out of the Moroccan port of Tangiers on November 20, according to a passenger, Miguel Marin, quoted by <i>El Mundo</i> newspaper.
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/ 17 November 2007
Governments must do more to fight global warming, spurred by a new United Nations scientific report and damage to nature that is already as frightening as science fiction, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Saturday. Ban said that he had just been on a trip to see ice shelves breaking up in Antarctica and the melting Torres del Paine glaciers in Chile.
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/ 17 November 2007
A United Nations climate conference agreed on Friday a blueprint for fighting global warming and said governments have only a few years to avert some of the worst impacts. Delegates at the 130-nation talks stood and applauded after chairperson Rajendra Pachauri brought down the gavel on the November 12 to 17 meeting in Valencia, Spain, that wraps up six years of work.
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/ 16 November 2007
Use of cocaine by celebrities is encouraging a trade that destroys whole communities in Latin America and Africa, the United Nations’ top anti-crime official said on Thursday. ”All these celebrity role models, turned into junkies, have in fact spent a lot of time in rehab lately, and their lives are a mess,” said Antonio Maria Costa.
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/ 12 November 2007
Justin Henin finished the toughest season of her career with one of her toughest victories at the WTA tennis championship. That’s exactly how she would have scripted it. Henin rallied to beat Maria Sharapova 5-7, 7-5, 6-3 on Sunday in the longest three-set final in the tournament’s history.
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/ 6 November 2007
Thousands cheered to the boom of a 21-cannon salute welcoming Spain’s king and queen to the North African enclave of Melilla on Tuesday, the second day of a trip that has seriously irked Morocco. The two-day visit is King Juan Carlos’s first as head of state to Ceuta and Melilla, North African cities that are remnants of Spain’s colonial empire.
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/ 6 November 2007
Cheering crowds waved Spanish flags as King Juan Carlos visited Spain’s disputed North African enclave of Ceuta on Monday, but hundreds of Moroccans demonstrated against him just across the border. With shouts of ”Long live the King!” and ”Ceuta is Spanish”, thousands of locals roared their approval at Juan Carlos.
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/ 5 November 2007
Spain’s Dani Pedrosa snatched the runners-up spot in the MotoGP world championship with victory in the season-ending Valencia Grand Prix after rival Valentino Rossi had to retire because of a technical problem. It was the first time that five-times world champion Rossi has finished outside the top two in any category.
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/ 2 November 2007
Fernando Alonso’s stormy year with McLaren came to a shuddering halt on Friday with the announcement that the Spaniard was leaving the team just one year into a three-year contract. The deposed world champion will quit the British team immediately even though his current contract had two years to run until the end of the 2009 season.
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/ 1 November 2007
Real Madrid hit four goals in a devastating first-half spell as they stormed to a 5-1 away win over Valencia at the Mestalla on Wednesday. A second-minute strike from Raul, a Ruud van Nistelrooy double and a superb shot from defender Sergio Ramos put Bernd Schuster’s side 4-0 up after just 37 minutes while Robinho added a classy fifth midway through the second half.
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/ 31 October 2007
A Spanish court on Wednesday convicted 21 people of involvement in the 2004 Madrid train bombings, but acquitted a man accused of helping mastermind the al-Qaeda-inspired attack that claimed nearly 200 lives. The heaviest sentences were handed out to two Moroccans and a Spaniard, Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras.
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/ 31 October 2007
A Spanish court will deliver verdicts on Wednesday on 28 people accused of playing a role in the 2004 Madrid train bombings, ending a politically charged trial into Europe’s deadliest al-Qaeda inspired attack. Ten bombs ripped through four commuter trains early on March 11 2004, strewing the tracks with bodies. The Islamist bombings killed 191 people and injured 1 800.
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/ 30 October 2007
Spain ”disagrees” with charges filed against seven Spaniards in Chad over an alleged operation by a French charity to abduct 103 children to France, its Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday. ”The government disagrees with this accusation,” Spain’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Bernardino Leon, told Spanish public radio RNE.
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/ 29 October 2007
Fifty-six Africans trying to reach Spain by boat drowned, starved or killed themselves in despair because their spare fuel supplies had been replaced by water, the sole survivor told the newspaper El Pais. A Spanish fishing boat found Senegalese skipper Leidi Fall barely alive in the half-sunken vessel south of the Cape Verde islands last Wednesday.
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/ 29 October 2007
Maria Sharapova clinched the final place at the season-ending WTA Championships on Sunday. She has qualified every year since winning on her debut in 2004. ”This has been a very frustrating year for me physically but I’m a big competitor and am determined to compete at the WTA Championships,” Sharapova said.
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/ 27 October 2007
Juande Ramos on Friday night resigned as manager of Sevilla, the Spanish team said, clearing the way for the award-winning Spaniard to join Tottenham. Sevilla said that Ramos had unilaterally rescinded his contract, presenting documents to this effect to senior team officials at the Sevilla stadium. The club referred to Ramos as ”the now former coach of Sevilla”.
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/ 25 October 2007
A Spanish fishing boat found seven bodies and one survivor in an open-topped wooden boat adrift off Mauritania, with dozens more passengers thought to be missing, Spain said on Thursday. According to the survivor, the boat began its journey with about 50 people on board and had been adrift for about 20 days.
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/ 25 October 2007
South African Andrew McLardy took steps to benefit from a second chance to make next week’s big-money Volvo Masters by taking an early share of the lead in Thursday’s Mallorca Classic first round. McLardy’s four-under 66 was soon matched by Ireland’s Gary Murphy.
A town in southern Spain on the weekend tossed what local officials said was the world’s largest salad, involving 6 700kg of lettuce, tomato, onion, pepper and olives. It took 20 cooks over three hours to mix all the ingredients needed to make the salad in the town of Pulpi in the province of Almeria, one of Spain’s main fruit and vegetable growing areas.
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/ 19 September 2007
Spain will try to scare off potential African migrants with television advertisements showing a young man apparently lying dead on some rocks and a mother grieving for her disappeared son. The Spanish government advertisements, which also feature Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour, started showing on Senegalese television on Wednesday.
Sevilla’s Spanish international defender Antonio Puerta died on Tuesday after suffering a heart attack during a Spanish league match on Saturday, the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) told Agence France-Presse. ”It’s official. Puerta has died,” an RFEF spokesperson said.
Real Madrid on Thursday unveiled new signings Arjen Robben and Gabriel Heinze at the Bernabeu stadium after they passed medicals, with both men saying they were delighted at the opportunity to swap the English Premiership for La Liga. Dutch winger Robben (23) arrived from Chelsea while Argentine defender Heinze (29) joins from Manchester United.
Elite cycling outfit Astana of reigning Tour of Spain champion Alexandre Vinokourov were told on Monday they cannot compete in next month’s Vuelta because of recent doping scandals concerning the team. Vuelta organisers said in a statement that they were withdrawing the Swiss-based Kazakh team’s invitation for the September 1 to 23 race.
Two small explosions hit part of the Spanish section of Wednesday’s Tour de France cycle race after a telephone bomb threat from a caller claiming to represent Basque separatist rebels ETA, newspaper website El Pais said. No one was hurt and the race was not called off after the explosions, which came after the caller said that ETA had planted several bombs.