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Rafael Sarmiento, the independent Councillor on Martorell Town Council and his PP colleague Francesc Arpel both agreed yesterday that Antonio mantis a Socialist Councillor was in the front line of the protest against the Partido Popular that was carried out in the town on Tuesday evening, resulting in both General Secretary Angel Acebes and Josep Pique the President of the PP in Catalunia being forced to flee for their own safety. The Catalan Socialists have ordered the expulsion of all those responsible for the violence, whilst Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero refused to comment on what had happened.
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A recent analysis by a Spanish economic paper has clearly shown that the Socialist budget for next year clearly intends to squeeze those autonomies where the Socialists do not rule, most notably Madrid, Valencia and Murcia, with Madrid losing out the most.With the May 2007 elections on the horizon, the Government has decided against handing Madrid President Esperanza Aguirre the money she desperately needs to improve the two major trunk roads the M-50 and the R-1. As for Valencia, the Socialists are pushing for the High Speed train for Barcelona and not showing any interest at all in bringing it to Valencia, whilst another curious facet is the three time increase in the budget afforded to the Housing Ministry.
This coming Saturday will see Viggo Mortenson, the star of the “Lord of the Rings” films and more recently a cinematic adaptation of the ‘Alatriste’ novels of Arturo Perez Reverte, making an appearance at the Palacio de la Musica in the town. His appearance comes after the Torrevieja Culture Institute published in association with Perceval Press – owned by Mr. Mortenson – of an anthology of texts about the new Cuban art movement. The actor – born of a Danish father and an American mother – is seen as one of the most interesting of the new actors of Hollywood, being able to turn his hand equally successfully to poetry writing, painting, photography or jazz. Equally, since he was brought up in Argentina, he speaks fluent Spanish.
A small aircraft owned by baseball star Cory Lidle crashed in thick fog into the 40th and 41st floors of the 52-storey Belaire Condominium in Manhattan yesterday afternoon, killing both people on board, believed to be Mr. Lidle and his wife. The plane apparently crashed into the side of the building and then tumbled to the ground, leaving several apartments in flames. The FBI was quick to point out that it was an accident and not a terrorist attack.
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United Nations de-mining officials, already worried by up to 1 million pieces of unexploded ordnance in southern Lebanon left over from Israel’s 34-day war with Hezbollah, voiced concern yesterday that the problem could worsen as winter weather embeds the munitions deeper into the ground. “This will make the job more dangerous since it becomes difficult to detect and clear the suspected contaminated areas,” UN Interim Force in Lebanon Spokesman Alexander Ivanko said of the unexploded ordnance (UXOs) and cluster bomb units (CBUs) still remaining from this summer’s conflict. “UNIFIL de-mining teams and UXO disposal units are trying to remove as many as they can before the winter season,” he added, when the soil becomes softer due to rain. In Geneva yesterday, UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland added that unexploded munitions have been a much bigger problem than originally foreseen, numbering in the hundreds of thousands in no small part due to Israel’s excessive use of cluster bombs at the end of the war.
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Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian teenager who was held captive for eight years has stated that she wants to own the house in which she was held in order that it not become a tourist attraction. She told the Austrian newspaper Kurier that she would let he captor’s mother live in the house in the semi-rural Vienna suburb of Strasshof ‘so people don’t turn it into an odd thing, a sort of pilgrimage site where ashtrays and coffee mugs are sold’.
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Madonna has after all adopted a one year old Malawan boy according to the father Yohame Banda, who stated that he was the father of David ‘who has been adopted’. He added that he was happy that the boy would be well looked-after in the United States. His mother had died just one month after giving birth
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The arms embargo in Darfur is being blatantly violated by all parties operating in the war-torn Sudanese region, including Government forces, allied Janjaweed militias, rebel groups and insurgents from neighbouring Chad, according to the latest report from a panel of experts set up by the United Nations Security Council. The panel’s report, released this morning, found that Chadian rebels are helping to stoke the conflict in Darfur – especially in the region’s north and west – by reportedly joining Government forces and the Janjaweed in their operations against rebel groups. The experts said there are reliable reports that Sudan is re-supplying the Chadian rebels with weapons and vehicles, with weapons and ammunition observed being offloaded at local airports and moved to locations within Darfur, where three years of fighting have killed an estimated 200,000 people and forced another 2 million to leave their homes.
Indian novelist Kiran Desai yesterday was declared the winner of the Man Booker Prize for fiction for her book “The Inheritance of Loss”. At 35, Miss Desai becomes the youngest-ever winner of the prize, one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards. She succeeds where her mother had failed: Anita Desai was short listed three times for the prize, but never won.
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