WEEKLY DIGEST – 2 FEBRUARY 2015

IRAQ BOUND

The first 30 members of the Special Operations Command due to be deployed in Iraq left last Wednesday night in an Airbus of the 45th Group of the Spanish Air Force from Torrejon Air Base, transferring the first military personnel tasked with helping train the Iraqi armed forces. The contingent will be integrated into the international coalition to combat the terrorist group DAESH. They will be deployed in both Besmaya and Baghdad. The rest of the contingent will travel in the coming weeks, until all 300 of the full military contingent are deployed.

SMALL CHANGE

El Corte Inglés are introducing a new style of shopping trolley in their grocery stores, described as being lighter, compact and more manageable for the shopper, with more depth than the traditional trolley but taking up less space, the trolley has a 100 litre capacity, has a perimeter handle and can spin 360 degrees. The trolley is also designed to be easier to handle for those less able bodied shoppers. So far, 14 areas have had the new trolleys introduced, including in Alicante.

BOX CLEVER

A motorist in the northern Spanish city of Vigo had a lucky escape this week, when a good container fell from the sky and crashed onto his car. An investigation has been launched to ascertain how an incident that had a lucky outcome this time could have occurred.

CERVANTES CASKET FOUND

Experts searching for the remains of Miguel de Cervantes said that they found wooden fragments of a casket bearing the initials "M.C." with bones in and around them in a crypt underneath the chapel of a cloistered convent in Madrid. Archeologists made the find during excavations to solve the centuries-old mystery of where the famed Spanish writer was laid to rest. Aanthropologist Francisco Etxeberria will now start examining the bones. Cervantes was 69 when he died and investigators have solid clues to work with as they conduct their probe.

FITUR SETS PACE

The International Tourism Fair, also known as FITUR, held its 35th edition in Madrid, Spain last week. The Spanish capital is the headquarters of the World Tourism Organisation and FITUR, which is the first in a series of major tourism fairs held across the world annually sets the tempo for activities in the travel industry. The trade show exhibited 9,107 companies from 165 countries and hosted around 200,000 visitors from around the world, of which 120,000 were professionals, generating revenue of about 200 million euros for the city of Madrid.

RAJOY ON DEFENSIVE

The 60-year-old prime minister has been eclipsed in recent opinion polls by Pablo Iglesias, 36, the leader of the newly created anti-austerity party Podemos, while the 42-year-old Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez says Rajoy is out-of-date. Even within the government, 43-year-old Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria’s approval rating was 11 percentage points higher than her boss, in a Metroscopia poll for El Pais newspaper.

MORÓN AIR BASE

Negotiations are taking place between Spain and the United States with the aim of accomodating the permanent deployment of a crisis response military force at Morón de la Frontera Air Base (Seville). The temporary deployment of this force was authorised on 19 April 2013 for the security of partners and neighbours, as well as for Spain, in a key region for maintaining global peace and stability.

PRIVATE FLY

The Spanish government has given the green light to the sale of airport operator AENA, initially selling a 28% share of the company which is the world’s biggest airport operator by passenger volume. The shares will be listed on 11 February, with the sale set to bring in between 1.5 and 2 billion euro. Aena operates 46 Spanish airports and has stakes in other airports, such as Colombia, Mexico and London’s Luton, dealing with 187 million passengers a year. 51% of the capital will remain in the hands of the State and the workers will continue to be public servants.

WILDFIRES

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Affairs has published the statistics on wildfires between 1 January and 31 December 2014 on its website, which indicates that a total number of 9,754 wildfires occurred in 2014, the lowest amount in the last 10 years. Until this year, the lowest number of wildfires in a single year during the last decade was 10,797 (in 2013).

NI CONTRIBUTIONS

The number of foreigners registered with the Spanish Social Security System stood at 1,552,639 in December, an increase of 0.21% on the previous month and an increase of 3,241 average contributors. This is the first increase in the number of foreign NI contributors in Spain following five months of decline (since June 2014 when the number rose slightly by 0.09%).

PODEMOS HAIL GREEK WIN

Following Syriza’s win in the Greek elections at the weekend Spain’s anti-austerity party Podemos hailed the victory with a dig at Germany. “It is the people’s hour,” the party tweeted, while Miguel Urbano, a Podemos leader in Athens to support Syriza said: “We have come to . . . see with our own eyes the change that is starting in Greece but which is happening for the people of the south of Europe.” Another, Pablo Iglesias, said: "We will work to support Syriza but we will also work in Spain, acknowledging that it is a different economic and political reality."

GAY PRIDE

Spain’s King Felipe VI has appeared on the wrap of last week’s bilingual Ragap magazine making him the world’s first monarch to appear on the cover of a gay magazine. The king was featured in a special edition of the publication which will be given away at the International Tourism Fair in Madrid. The royal household say that they are aware and approve of his appearance in the magazine, which specialises on homosexual, bisexual, and transsexual topics.

ISOLATION WARD

The government has agreed to set up a high-level isolation ward in the Central Defence Hospital, Madrid, to deal with cases of highly infectious diseases. A spokesperson said the aim is to "strengthen, improve and modernise an already-existing unit to provide the national defence service and the National Health System with highly necessary healthcare resources. It will not exclusively be a facility for Ebola-related cases.

POLICE ARRESTS

Five officers from the National Police Scientific Unit in Madrid have been arrested accused of tampering with evidence. The arrests were made at the weekend at the Carabanchel police station where they are based, before being transferred to the courts. The officers were later released with charges pending, although the irregularities under investigation are said to be “minor”.

FINE CHINA

Newly appointed Chinese Ambassador to Spain, Mr. Lv Fan, praised the success of 41 years of bilateral cooperation between Spain and China which have seen frequent high-level diplomatic visits that have strengthened the mutual confidence between both nations. The Ambassador made the statement at an official reception in Madrid to celebrate his appointment as Chinese Ambassador to Spain, a country he had worked in as a diplomat 20 years ago. Last year, the President of the Government of Spain, Mariano Rajoy, visited China and signed a cooperation agreements valued at 3.2 billion euro. In 2014, bilateral trade between the nations set a new record at 28 billion dollars, making China the most important non-EU trade partner to Spain. Chinese investment in Spain was worth 933 million euro in 2014.

Filed under: http://www.theleader.info/article/46260/

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