Sorted by date Results 1 - 20 of 20
MADRID (AP) — Scholars in the work of surrealist Frida Kahlo have searched for more than six decades for "The Wounded Table," a 1940 oil painting illuminating her pain over the breakup of her marriage to muralist Diego Rivera that hasn't been seen since an exhibition in Poland. And the historians strongly reject the idea that the mystery of its whereabouts has been solved, as claimed by a Spanish art dealer who says the painting is now sitting in a London warehouse awaiting a buyer willing to spend more than 40 million euros ($45 million). E...
MADRID (AP) — There's a bookshelf filled with donated novels. Hotel toiletries rest on cardboard boxes turned into bedside tables. Meals are served with personalized notes from the staff. And an army of volunteers do their best to keep up an air of optimism amid the pandemic. At a cavernous convention center that has become Spain's largest makeshift hospital, these touches of kindness and camaraderie are helping to make the days and nights more bearable for patients afflicted with COVID-19. "Despite the distance that we keep from each other, t...
MADRID, Spain (AP) — Tens of millions of students stayed home on three continents, security forces went on standby to guard against large gatherings of people, and bars, restaurants and offices closed Friday to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. The virus edged ever closer to the world's power centers, with positive tests for the Canadian prime minister's wife, a top aide to Iran's supreme leader, a Brazilian official who met with President Donald Trump, and an Australian Cabinet minister who met with U.S. Attorney General William B...
MADRID (AP) — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Sunday that the world's efforts to stop climate change have been "utterly inadequate" so far and there is a danger global warming could pass the "point of no return." Speaking before the start Monday of a two-week international climate conference in Madrid, the U.N. chief said the impact of rising temperatures — including more extreme weather — is already being felt around the world, with dramatic consequences for humans and other species. He noted that the world has the scientific know...
MADRID (AP) — Authorities in Gibraltar said they intercepted an Iranian supertanker Thursday that was believed to be breaching European Union sanctions by carrying a shipment of Tehran's crude oil to war-ravaged Syria. A senior Spanish official said the operation was requested by the United States. Iran's state-run IRNA news agency called the incident "an illegal seizure of an Iranian oil tanker." Gibraltar port and law enforcement agencies, assisted by Britain's Royal Marines, boarded the Grace 1 early Thursday, authorities on the British over...
MADRID (AP) — Venezuela's longtime spy chief was arrested Friday in Madrid by Spanish police acting on a United States warrant for allegedly trafficking tons of cocaine. Maj. Gen. Hugo Carvajal, who for more than a decade advised late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez and headed the country's security apparatus, recently became the most influential military figure to declare his loyalty to opposition leader Juan Guaidó. The opposition saw Carvajal's criticism of Venezuela's current government as a possible stimulus to prod other military fig...
MADRID (AP) — Spain has issued at least two international arrest warrants for members of a self-proclaimed human rights group who allegedly led a mysterious raid at the North Korean Embassy in Madrid last month and offered the FBI stolen data from the break-in. A National Court judge who lifted a secrecy order in the case Tuesday said an investigation of the Feb. 22 attack uncovered evidence that "a criminal organization" shackled and gagged embassy staff members before escaping with computers, hard drives and documents. The intruders also u...
MADRID (AP) — It's being billed as Spain's "trial of the century": A dozen politicians and activists are in in the Supreme Court on Tuesday stemming from their involvement in Catalonia's push for independence in 2017. The defendants face charges including rebellion and sedition in a proceeding that is being televised live and expected to last at least three months. It could set the course for the Catalan secession movement and the tone of national politics for years to come. HOW DID WE GET HERE? The charges stem from the Catalan independence r...
MADRID (AP) — The Basque separatist group ETA said it has dismantled its organizational structure after a six-decade independence campaign that killed hundreds in Spain, taking the final step in disbanding after disarming last year and bringing an end to one of Europe's bloodiest nationalist conflicts in recent times. The Spanish government vowed Wednesday not to abandon its investigation of crimes from the group's violent past, saying security forces would "continue to pursue the terrorists, wherever they may be." ETA, whose initials stand f...
MADRID (AP) — A woman in Spain has found unexpected fame on social media after many found she bore a striking resemblance to U.S. President Donald Trump. A journalist reporting on farming in northwestern Spain posted on Instagram a picture of Dolores Leis dressed in farm clothing with a hoe over her shoulder, prompting thousands of responses. The 64-year-old has since been asked to comment on pressing U.S. policy and international issues — though she has shown more concern for a moth plague threatening her potato crops. "I say that it must be...
MADRID (AP) — Spanish and Portuguese authorities announced Friday that they have taken down a criminal network that has been making large profits by smuggling glass eels to Asia. Authorities across the continent have been trying to tackle the smugglers, who take European glass eels to Asian countries, where they are raised into adults and their meat commands high prices for local delicacies. The trading of the European eel has been restricted since 2009 under the rules of the CITES convention for the international trade of endangered wildlife....
MADRID (AP) — A Spanish Supreme Court judge charged 13 Catalan separatist politicians with rebellion Friday for their attempts to make the region independent of Spain, dealing a heavy blow to the secessionist movement with an indictment that could put its political elite behind bars for decades. Judge Pablo Llarena ordered five of the Catalan politicians who answered a court summons Friday to be held without bail. Another of the summoned politicians, the ERC party's Marta Rovira, did not heed the order and announced in a letter that she was f...
MADRID (AP) — The smugglers took Rodriguez Tankeu's savings and disappeared, leaving the 25-year-old bewildered near Tripoli, the Libyan capital. The former car mechanic headed to Algeria, where he saw, one by one, all the spots on engine-powered boats go to wealthier migrants. Broke, tired and desperate, he moved further west. "Morocco was my last hope," he says. "It was either making it to Europe or giving up for once and for all." Algeria and Morocco are increasingly popular points of departure for economic migrants and asylum-seekers whose...
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spanish police arrested a former aide to Venezuela's ambassador to the United Nations on a U.S. warrant in connection with a $1 billion bribery scheme at Venezuela's state-run oil company, officials said Friday. Spain's Civil Guard said Rafael Reiter was detained in Madrid as part of a months-long sting ordered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. On Thursday, three other former Venezuelan officials were arrested on money laundering charges brought by prosecutors in Houston, including a former deputy energy m...
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spain announced an unprecedented plan Saturday to sack Catalonia's separatist leaders, install its own people in their place and call a new local election, using previously untapped constitutional powers to take control of the prosperous region that is threatening to secede. Catalonia's president responded by making a veiled independence threat, telling lawmakers to come up with a plan to counter Spain's "attempt to wipe out self-government." Even moderate Catalans were aghast at the scope of the move, greeting Prime M...
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spain's prime minister says his government will unveil specific measures Saturday to halt Catalonia's independence bid but refused to confirm if that included plans to hold a regional election in January. The opposition Socialists are supporting the conservative government's effort to rein in the country's deepest political crisis in decades. The Socialists' main negotiator, Carmen Calvo, said earlier Friday that an early election in the prosperous northeastern region of Catalonia had been agreed upon as part of the deal...
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — As separatists in Catalonia jockeyed Friday to elude court rulings and find ways to deliver on their promise to declare independence, business giants hit back with plans to relocate their headquarters elsewhere in Spain amid the increasing political uncertainty. Caixabank, Spain's third lender in global assets, said Friday that it was moving from Barcelona to the eastern city of Valencia, "given the current situation in Catalonia." It said it wants to remain in the eurozone and under the supervision of the European C...
MADRID (AP) — Russian authorities are fighting the extradition of an alleged Russian hacker from Spain to the United States, the suspect's lawyer said Friday, in the latest move by Moscow to block U.S. prosecution of suspected Russian cybercriminals. Pyotr Levashov, a 37-year-old known as one of the world's most notorious hackers, was arrested earlier this year while vacationing with his family in Barcelona on a request from the U.S., where authorities want him on charges of fraud and unauthorized interception of electronic communications. L...
MADRID (AP) — An extremist cell was preparing bombs for an imam who planned to blow himself up at a Barcelona monument, a key suspect in the attacks that killed 15 people in northeastern Spain told a judge Tuesday, according to a judicial official. The suspect, Mohamed Houli Chemlal, was one of four men taken before Spain's National Court in Madrid to testify about the Islamic cell that attacked pedestrians in Barcelona and the nearby seaside town of Cambrils last week. National Court Judge Fernando Andreu questioned the four about the v...
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. authorities announced Monday they are working to dismantle a global computer network that sent hundreds of millions of spam emails worldwide each year. The Russian man alleged to be at the head of the scheme was arrested Friday in Spain. The U.S. Justice Department said it was working to take down the sprawling Kelihos botnet, which at times was made up of more than 100,000 compromised computers that sent phony emails advertising counterfeit drugs and work-at-home scams, harvested users' logins and installed malware that...
