Sete Gibernau, whose hopes of a Spanish Grand Prix victory were ended by a controversial last-bend collision with world champion Valentino Rossi, has vowed to battle back in Portugal next weekend. Spaniard Gibernau was on course for victory on Sunday as he led his bitter Italian rival into the final curve.
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 9Â 000 years ago. The group of a few dozen crocodiles subsists at a pond near the Senegalese border.
Former triple French Open winner Gustavo Kuerten’s comeback from injury ended at the second round stage of the Valencia ATP tournament in Spain on Thursday when he was beaten by Spain’s Albert Martin 6-2, 6-0. But Spanish teenager Rafael Nadal, widely tipped as a possible champion at Roland Garros this year, was in awesome form.
Real Madrid coach Vanderlei Luxemburgo has defended David Beckham, saying he is the hardest-working player at the club. ”He is the player who works hardest here and he plays in a position which isn’t his,” Luxemburgo said in an interview with sports daily As, published on Wednesday.
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/ 23 February 2005
A 1-0 home leg win over Juventus leaves record European champions Real Madrid well placed to reach the quarterfinals of the Champions League. In other action, a brace from Claudio Pizarro helped Bayern Munich down Arsenal 3-1, PSV Eindhoven beat AS Monaco 1-0 and Liverpool continued to save their best perform for Europe, beating Bayer Leverkusen 3-1 at Anfield.
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/ 16 February 2005
A collection of soccer talent not seen in at least 30 years braved near-freezing temperatures and a polar wind on Tuesday, displaying their skills for an exhibition all-star match in hopes of raising -million for victims of December’s south-east Asian tsunamis. Barcelona’s Ronaldinho led his team of mostly non-European stars to victory.
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/ 14 February 2005
Michael Owen and Ivan Helguera scored three minutes apart late in the second half and Real Madrid rallied past Osasuna 2-1 on Sunday to give coach Vanderlei Luxemburgo a record seventh straight victory since taking over the club. The victory on a wind-swept field kept Madrid four points behind Spanish league leader FC Barcelona.
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/ 1 February 2005
Four hospitals and 60 pharmacies in the north-eastern Spanish region of Catalonia will distribute cannabis to patients suffering from Aids, cancer, multiple sclerosis or chronic pain of nervous origin, local media reported on Tuesday. Patients not responding to conventional treatments will be prescribed capsules containing cannabis powder.
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/ 24 January 2005
Kimi Raikkonen is confident the new McLaren car will be able to challenge Ferrari’s formula-one supremacy. McLaren launched the MP4-20 at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya, hoping to avoid the mistakes that led to a terrible start to 2004. The car is an update of the MP4-19B, which was used for the second half of 2004.
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/ 24 January 2005
The odds on Valencia retaining their Spanish league title lengthened on Sunday after the reigning champions went down 3-1 at local rivals Villarreal. Villarreal’s Argentine international Juan Roman Riquelme was the man who did the damage with a hat-trick.
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/ 13 January 2005
Don Quixote, the endearing tale of a mad, errant knight and his sidekick, Sancho Panza — described variously as the ”universal novel” or the ”bible of humanity” — celebrates its 400th birthday this week, kicking off a year-long party for one of the world’s most acclaimed literary works.
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.
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/ 17 December 2004
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.
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/ 17 December 2004
Dumping on one’s royal family is a harmless enough sport in some countries, but in the fiercely independent eastern Spanish region of Catalonia the concept has taken on a whole new meaning. Traditionally at Christmas, Catalans place ceramic statuettes in nativity scenes, but this year the statuettes have sparked some controversy.
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/ 13 December 2004
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.
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/ 6 December 2004
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.
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/ 20 November 2004
Official condemnation of the racist barracking suffered by England footballers in Spain this week cannot hide the fact that xenophobia is on the rise in a country now Europe’s biggest magnet for immigrants, Spanish anti-racism campaigners warned on Friday.
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/ 17 November 2004
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.
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/ 28 September 2004
Spanish construction group ACS-Dragados is vying with a Franco-Canadian-led consortium for the right to build a high-speed rail link in South Africa ready for the 2010 World Cup finals, the Spanish financial daily La Gaceta reported on Monday. The 1,2-billion dollar (R7,6-billion) project would link Pretoria with Johannesburg and the Johannesburg International airport, about 80km further south.
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/ 7 September 2004
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.
The chief economist of the World Bank predicted in an interview published on Saturday that oil prices will return in a matter of months to a stable level of about a barrel after hitting record highs last week of nearly . Although prices closed down on Friday, many traders predicted that the volatile hikes will continue.
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.
Legal action in Spain and the United States taking aim at secret bank accounts of President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea could become a weapon to help put an end to his 25-year dictatorship, say opposition leaders and activists from the West African nation.
At least 14 people were injured during the annual ”running of the bulls” festival in Pamplona, Spain, on Monday. Among those injured were two United States citizens, a French national and a visitor from Colombia. The festival, made world-famous by writer Ernest Hemingway, comes to an end on Wednesday.
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.
Three suspects in the Madrid railway bombings blew themselves up on Saturday in a southwestern suburb of Madrid as police prepared to storm their apartment, setting off a powerful explosion that killed one special forces agent and wounded 15 police officers, the interior minister said. Saturday’s news further shocked Spaniards, still traumatised by the March 11 bombings that killed 191 people.
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.