Woman dies when her parachute fails to open properly

A 39 year old woman died on Sunday during a parachute jump in Ocaña, Toledo, when her main parachute failed to open completely getting tangled with the emergency chute. It happened at 1pm close to the Ocaña airdrome, when the woman, Eva Azori García, from Valdemoro in Madrid, carried out her second jump of the day. She had ten months experience and carried out 24 previous jumps, according to the Parachuting Centre at the airdrome. Conditions...

Times are desperate in Spain. The Sun is setting on expats' Costa dreams

 It was sundowner time at the Cantina tapas bar in the picturesque village of Frigiliana, a few miles inland from the Costa del Sol town of Nerja. Inside, local men were watching bullfighting on television and smoking cigars in quiet contravention of the smoking ban. Outside, expatriate Britons were discussing the vagaries of living in Spain while downing glasses of tinto de verano, the popular summer drink of red wine and lemonade....

Bankia shares are suspended in Madrid

Trading in shares in the Spanish lender Bankia have been suspended in Madrid. The market regulator CNMV said it was "due to circumstances that may affect the normal share trading". Bankia is reported to be due to ask the government for a bailout of more than 15bn euros ($19bn; £12bn) after a board meeting later on Friday. Bankia, which is Spain's fourth-largest bank, was part-nationalised two weeks ago because of its problems with bad...

Nikki Beach Marbella May 6th 2012

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Brink's Mat the reason that Great Train Robber was shot dead in Marbella

The Brink’s-Mat curse even touched on the Great Train Robbery gang of 1963. One of them, Charlie Wilson, found himself in trouble when £3 million of Brink’s-Mat investors’ money went missing in a drug deal. In April 1990, he paid the price when a young British hood knocked on the front door of his hacienda north of Marbella and shot Wilson and his pet husky dog before coolly riding off down the hill on a yellow bicyc...

British tourist falls to her death from hotel balcony in Magalluf

23 year old British tourist has fallen to her death from the third floor balcony of her hotel in Magalluf, Mallorca. Emergency sources said it happened at 4.25am Saturday morning at the Hotel Teix in Calle Pinada. Local police and emergency health services went to scene. After 20 minutes of an attempt to re-animate her heart, the woman was pronounced dead. Online descriptions for the Hotel say it is the best place to stay of you are looking...

Four of the last reporters and photographers willing to cover crime stories have been slain in less than a week in violence-torn Veracruz state

Four of the last reporters and photographers willing to cover crime stories have been slain in less than a week in violence-torn Veracruz state, where two Mexican drug cartels are warring over control of smuggling routes and targeting sources of independent information. The brutal campaign is bleeding the media and threatening to turn Veracruz into the latest state in Mexico where fear snuffs out reporting on the drug war. Three photojournalists...

Greek far-right parties could end up with as much as 20 percent of the vote in Sunday's elections. The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party has intensified the xenophobic atmosphere in the country.

At night, the streets leading to Omonoia Square are empty. That wasn't always the case. The area was the premier multicultural neighborhood of Athens and one of the first quarters to be gentrified. Jazz bars and Indian restaurants lined the streets, separated by the occasional rooms-by-the-hour hotel. It was a quarter full of immigrants, drug addicts and African prostitutes, but also of journalists, ambitious young artists and teenagers...

Locked Up Abroad is different.

Reality TV is, at its core, about letting viewers revel in the bad decision-making of others: those who speak without thinking, who backstab, who have sex without condoms, who cheat. Frustratingly, though, reality shows—to which I am unapologetically addicted—tend to reward bad behavior, by giving its villains notoriety, spinoffs, opportunities to endorse weight-loss products, a nice sideline in paid interviews with supermarket tabloids,...

Low fare airline bmibaby to close

Low fare carrier bmibaby is set to close later this year, threatening the loss of hundreds of jobs and the ending of its flights. The carrier transferred to International Airlines Group, the owners of British Airways, last month, but consultations have now started with unions about its closure in September. The GMB union said it was "devastating" news, especially for the East Midlands, where hundreds of jobs are now threatened with the...

Man travels by train for free - with his bike

21 year old man from Tarragona, has managed to travel for free on the train for months. His trick was to take his bicycle with him purchasing the bike ticket for free over the internet. He then electronically manipulated the ticket allowing it to be used by him. Quite how he did that is not revealed but it is believed he manipulated the bar code on the ticet. He travelled for free on 32 trips to Barcelona, Sevilla and Madrid, and RENFE...

Two Spanish restaurants in the Top Three Best Restaurants in the World

Two of the top three restaurants in the world are Spanish. The new list from ‘Restaurant’ magazine places the exotic Danish restaurant ‘Noma’ at the top of the list for the third consecutive year. He took the honour after Ferrran Adriá’s El Bulli restaurant closed down. Second place goes to ‘El Celler de Can Roca’ in Girona run by the Catalan chef, Joan Roc. He’s helped by his brothers Roca, Josep and Jordi. Third is the ‘Mugaritz’, from...

Duke of Palma prepared to admit guilt in the Nóos Institute case

The Duke of Palma, Iñaki Urdangarín has said, via his lawyer, that he is prepared to declare himself guilty if he does not have to go to jail. Both his lawyer and ex partner, Diego Torres, want to see such an arrangement. It would mean he would have to return the public money taken in Valencia and Baleares in the Nóos Institute affair, some 3.5 million €, and a two year prison sentence. In Spain sentences of two years or less are automatically...