News stories by Tito Drago, page 2

Civil society organisations welcomed the announcement of an additional 1.27 billion dollars in development aid funding by European Commission president José Manuel Durâo Barroso, but said it was insufficient to reduce extreme poverty by 2015, as stipulated by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The 17th Titirilandia (Puppetland) Festival will conclude with a marathon puppet show, to be held Sunday Aug. 29 in Spain's capital city in aid of a school in the remote Bolivian mining province of Potosí.

Senegalese businesswoman Marie Thiaré makes her business cards by hand, because she has no way to have them printed -- a sharp contrast with the situation faced by women entrepreneurs in Europe, where it is easy to order business cards, and most people even have their own home computer and printer.

The leaders of the 60 European Union, Latin American and Caribbean nations meeting in the capital of Spain agreed Tuesday that unity between the two regions is essential to weathering the global economic crisis.

The trial of Spain's 'superjudge' Baltasar Garzón is aimed at squelching the principle of universal justice by suspending its main advocate, Dolores Delgado, a prosecutor at the Audiencia Nacional, Spain's highest criminal court, told IPS.

Argentina is an example for Spaniards to bear in mind as they investigate crimes committed during the 1939-1975 dictatorship of general Francisco Franco, says Emilio Silva, head of the Spanish Association for the Recovery of Historic Memory (ARMH).

Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón, who became world-famous when he issued the warrant that resulted in former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's arrest in London in 1998, is now facing legal charges himself, which could cost him his job.

The only solution for the conflict over Morocco's occupation of the Western Sahara is to do what the Sahrawi people decide regarding their future, Zahra Ramdan, president of the Association of Sahrawi Women in Spain, told IPS.

Aminatou Haidar, the Western Sahara independence activist who has been on a hunger strike in a Spanish airport for 32 days demanding to be allowed to return to her homeland, was taken to the hospital just after midnight Wednesday, and is in intensive care.

The firm stance taken by Western Sahara independence activist Aminatou Haidar, in her third week of a hunger strike in an airport in Spain's Canary Islands, contrasts with the weak position of the Spanish government vis-à-vis the Moroccan government, which it has failed to pressure to allow the activist to return to her homeland.