News Headlines

SPANISH NEWS

It has been revealed that under the direction of Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, the Interior Ministry has been ‘at great pains’ to deny the information broadcast by the pro-Socialist Cadena SER to the effect that Eta carried out a bomb test in France last month. The information originally came from the Gendarmes, who has stated that the explosion was a test as the Basque terror group Eta ‘were trying out a new type of bomb’ If this information is confirmed, Despite Mr. Perez Rubalcaba’s best efforts, it would now seem that Eta has at least partially broken the ceasefire it announced earlier this year.

A BROKEN RELATIONSHIP

It would appear that the court case opened against the Municipal Police Force in Torrevieja has had one extremely undesirable side effect: the practical breaking-off of the relationship between the local force and members of the local barracks of the Guardia Civil. Members of the Corps have stated that the local force ‘is isolating’ itself and refuses to accept any help or collaboration in the majority of incidents under investigation. This apparently is due to the fact that for some considerable time the Municipal Force has taken upon itself the responsibility of public security, over which it has no jurisdiction, but this is due to the lack of numbers of Guardia Civil. The Municipal Police on the other hand state a recent incident ‘characterizes’ the depths to which the relationship between the two forces has sunk: as the Municipal Police Force sent a patrol last Friday to deal with a fire in a building, when the Guardia Civil arrived ‘its members leaned against their vehicle chatting’ as the incident unfolded. Meanwhile the Local Police Trades Union has managed to persuade its members in Torrevieja to call off a demonstration against the Guardia Civil last week, it may not be so successful in doing so should the relationship between the two law agencies continue to slide.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Mary Lacy, the District Attorney of Boulder in Colorado, announced yesterday that she was dropping all charges against John Mark Karr, who had been returned from Thailand accused of murdering six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, after DNA evidence ruled out Karr as the main suspect. Now insiders believe that he was ‘just seeking notoriety’. However after initially being freed, Karr was almost immediately arrested again on charges of possessing infantile pornography. Now he has been told that he must remain in Boulder until he can be taken to California to stand trial in a case that was started five years ago but was unable to proceed as Karr had left the state.

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The Mexican Electoral College yesterday stated that the results of the recent presidential elections should stand, and in effect named Felipe Calderon as President-Elect. The decision came after opposition parties presented 375 different cases against Mr. Calderon. The final result gave Mr. Calderon 243,934 votes more than his nearest rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and declaring Mr. Calderon the winner of the elections by 0.58%. However, Mr. Lopez Obrador stated that he ‘was not accepting’ the decision by the College and added that he would form ‘ a government of resistance’.

MARIA ESTHER DE CAPOVILLA

The death has been announced of Maria Esther de Capovilla, at 116, believed to be the world’s oldest person. Her granddaughter, property developer Catherine Capovilla stated that her grandmother had died on Sunday, two days after coming down with pneumonia. Married in 1917 and widowed thirty years later, Maria Esther de Capovilla was born on September 14 1889 – the same day as Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler

TUNNELING THEIR WAY OUT

Two Egyptians now face criminal charges in the Bryansk region of Russia for attempting to tunnel under the Russian border. The Prosecutor’s office stated that the pair – named as Mohammed Anwar el Maghriby Ali Kuram and Saad AliTaha Mohammed Hassan – hatched a plan last June to cross the border illegally into Western Europe, flying to Moscow, and then traveling to the border with Poland via car and train. They managed to tunnel their way into Poland, but once inside the country, apparently lost their way, and on the assumption that the barbed-wire fence they encountered was the border between Poland and Germany, dug another tunnel into what they assumed would be Germany, but in fact landed back in Russia. All this tunneling according to the border police was in fact carried out using a shoehorn.

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