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Sr. Verónica Berzosa Madrid, Spain, Nov 5, 2009 / 01:51 pm (CNA).- A 43 year-old prioresses has revolutionized an old Poor Clares convent in Spain, turning it onto a magnet for dozens of young professional women.Sister Veronica joined the Poor Clares Convent of the Ascension founded in 1604 in Lerma (Spain) at at time when it was going through a vocations crisis.  It was January 22, 1984, and Marijose Berzosa - Sr. Veronica's name prior to entering the convent - decided, at age 18, to leave behind a career in medicine, friends, nightlife and baketball."Nobody understood me. There were...

(See all these news nuggets and more by clicking the excerpt link below): 1. BBC News: “Darwin Teaching ‘Divides Opinion’” Darwinism is a controversial topic, and many believe creation should be taught in the classroom. But why is that news? 2. ScienceDaily: “Junk DNA Mechanism that Prevents Two Species from Reproducing Discovered” Has the U.S. government finally supported creationist research? Alas, no, but the results of a National Institutes of Health study fit squarely within the young-earth creation framework. 3. PhysOrg: “Charles Darwin Really Did Have Advanced Ideas about the Origin of Life” Charles Darwin was convinced that life’s origin...

The calendar has been produced by the Madrid Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual collective COGAM Controversy in Madrid with the launch of a 2010 lay calendar which shows images of ‘transsexual virgins’ recreating religious scenes decorated with crowns, condoms and phallic symbols. The lay calendar takes the religion out of the dates of the year, so Christmas Day becomes the day you eat the traditional Spanish turron to mark International Democracy Day, for example. The images are all based on famous Catholic images and iconography. The Venezuelan photographer who assembled the calendar, Juan Antinoo, had been commissioned by COGAM, the...

Spain Jobless Rate Stays At 17.9% Spain's unemployment rate is the highest in the EU Spain's unemployment rate has remained at 17.9% in the third quarter, the highest in the European Union. The number of jobless now stands at 4.1 million, the country's statistics agency said. The Spanish unemployment rate had risen for the previous eight quarters after its construction and debt-fuelled economic boom ended suddenly. Separately, a survey showed German business confidence rose for a seventh consecutive month in October. [snip]Posted last week: Spain Tips Into Depression

Catholic Spain Has a New Herald: Juan Manuel de Prada From acclaimed author to staunch apologist for the Church and the pope, including in "L'Osservatore Romano." His is one of the many stories of conversion from unbelief to the Christian faith, in Europe. Against progressive "tyranny" by Sandro Magister ROME, October 12, 2009 – For a few days now, Italian bookstores have been selling a collection of interviews with converts to the Catholic faith, some of whom are very prominent: from Jean-Claude Guillebaud of France to Janne Haaland Matlary of Norway, former deputy foreign minister of her country and an...

AFP - Two suspected ETA militants arrested in France earlier this week have been charged with conspiracy to collaborate with a terrorist organisation, a legal official said Saturday. Police apprehended 30-year-old Aitor Elizaran in a car park at the wheel of a stolen car in the Brittany seaside town of Carnac on October 19, along with a woman suspect, 32-year-old Oihana Sanvicente. Both were carrying loaded weapons at the time and have also been charged with firearms offences, possession of false documents, and car theft, the official said. The pair had been renting a studio at the holiday resort where...

U.S. President Barack Obama has set aside $13 billion in stimulus and budget funds for high-speed trains in America. If he wants an example of how best to use that cash, Obama might take a look at Spain’s growing high-speed network. I’ve just arrived in Madrid from Barcelona during a reporting trip. And for the first time, I chose the high-speed rail system, known locally as Ave, instead of a traditional airline connection. My verdict: The train beats air travel hands down. That certainly wasn’t always the case. It has been years since I’ve traveled between the two biggest Spanish...

Havana's man in Europe is returning from Cuba with a simple request: For his EU partners to drop their focus on human rights. After a two-day visit with the Cuban government, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos will press his Continental counterparts to scrap their 1996 "Common Position" on Cuba in order to fully normalize ties with Raul Castro's dictatorship. .. "Consider Mr. Moratinos a trend-setter in the age of Obama, as the U.S. president's own overtures to Castro (not to mention to Iran, Burma and now Sudan) follow a distinctly Moratinian philosophy. This holds that engaging dictators will yield...

MADRID -- Spain's announcement that it will seek a major improvement in European ties with Cuba's dictatorship once it takes over the presidency of the 27-country European Union on Jan. 1 is bad news not only for pro-democracy activists on the island, but also for oppositionists in several other authoritarian-ruled Latin American countries. During a 48-hour visit to Cuba earlier this week, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said that Spain will take advantage of its upcoming six-month presidency of the European Union to try to change the group's ``common stand'' toward Cuba, in place since 1996. Under the policy,...

Spain doesn't feel like a country with an unemployment rate of 19pc. Bars, shops and restaurants are full and only 3pc of mortgages have gone sour. What gives? Unemployment benefits in Spain are very generous and family support networks are stronger. But the Spanish may also be falling back on a less attractive tradition – dodging taxes. Anecdotes abound of people working in side jobs while collecting unemployment benefits. A study by the University of Linz estimates illicit activity will account for 19.5pc of Spain's GDP by 2010. There are signs that the so-called black economy is growing. Corporate tax...

An estimated one million people participated in a rally in Madrid Saturday to protest a proposed new law that would expand permission for abortion. The overwhelmingly Catholic country currently allows only abortion in the cases of rape, fetal abnormality, or when the mother’s physical or mental health is at risk. But the proposed law, introduced by socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, would allow abortion for any reason during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. Furthermore, the bill is proposing to allow girls as young as 16 to have an abortion without parental consent. Under the theme “Every Life...

Great Manifestation anti-avortement à Madrid (English Translation) Over one million people participated in this mobilization organizers said. They were protesting against the proposed liberalization of abortion which would abort freely within 14 weeks. Seniors, families with children and strollers, groups of adolescents, religious and priests: A human tide has flooded the center of the Spanish capital. They were more than one million Catholics supported by the Church and the right to protest Saturday in Madrid against the proposed liberalization of abortion from the socialist government. The organizers have amounted to 1.5 million people participating in this event, while the Madrid...

Big Anti-Abortion Rally In Spain Tens of thousands of people have joined a protest march in the Spanish capital Madrid to oppose government plans to liberalise the country's abortion law. Organisers said they hoped more than one million people would attend the rally, from all over the country. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero wants to introduce abortion on demand. At present, a pregnancy can only be terminated in mainly Catholic Spain under specific circumstances. It is the latest in a series of ethical issues which have pitted the Catholic right against the Socialist government, which has legalised gay...

Spain Set For Anti-Abortion Rally By Steve Kingstone BBC News, Madrid Proposed changes to abortion law have angered large parts of Spanish society Thousands of people are expected to march through the Spanish capital Madrid to oppose government plans to liberalise the country's abortion law. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero wants to introduce abortion on demand. At present, a pregnancy can only be terminated in Spain under specific circumstances. It is the latest in a series of ethical issues which have pitted the Socialist cabinet against Spain's Catholic right. 'Rights and respect' Saturday's march is called Every Life...

Corporal Cristo Ancor Cabello Santana Madrid, Spain, Oct 14, 2009 / 04:35 pm (CNA).- Corporal Cristo Ancor Cabello Santana, the lastest Spanish soldier to die in Afghanistan, fulfilled his wish to be baptized before dying. Cabello had asked the chaplain at the Herat Base to baptize him and was planning on receiving the sacrament last weekend before being wounded in a Taliban attack. The chaplain wanted to use a baptismal shell being sent from Madrid to administer the sacrament, but Cabello told him he already had one from when he made a pilgrimage to Santiago in Spain. The chaplain used...

MADRID (AFP) – Underground fires have been raging for weeks in a wetlands area in southern Spain, sparked by the dry summer and the overuse of water for agriculture, an environmentalist said Tuesday. The Tablas de Daimiel National Park, fed by the Guadiana river, has been drying up since the 1980s, and some lagoons have already disappeared. In late August, hot dry weather caused the peat subsurface to catch fire, and plumes of smoke can be seen rising from the ground, said Jose Manuel Hernandez, head of the environmental organisation that looks after the park. "This is a new phenomenon...

Watch the video report at the source. Crowd yells at Mr. Bean to resign. Downthread I'll post some other recent news about Spain and the disasterous leadership of Zapatero and his socialists. Seems like a good time for a round up since Mr. Bean met with Captain 0 today. (Bambi pawned off some Gitmo detainees on Bean.) You will easily note the many similarities between Zippytero and Dear Leader. I mean besides the funny ears.

FEW tiffs are as nasty as those between old friends. A bitter bust-up between Spain’s prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and the media giant Prisa, publisher of the newspaper El País, mirrors the intimacy that once reigned. It also highlights problems on both sides.

“That’s the nature of women, not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not” & “There are only two families in the world, my old grandmother used to say, the Haves and the Have-nots.” Quotes by Miguel Cervantes In keeping with our cultural theme and “politics free” Sunday blog post, I have chosen to enlighten my readers on the history of a Spanish town near Madrid, the birthplace of the illustrious Miguel de Cervantes, the author of “Don Quixote”, and my Spanish casa for many years while serving in the USAF stationed at Torrejon...

French marines aboard trawlers in the Indian Ocean Saturday fired on pirates to repel a dawn attack, as two vessels used in the attack were subsequently captured by Seychelles coastguards, sources said. "Three small launches... (which were) nearly invisible and that we had on the radar at the last moment, chased us," a member of the crew of the Drennac, one of two fishing vessels approached by the pirates, told AFP by telephone. The French military said the marines had first fired flares then "warning shots in the air and across the bows of the pirates' boats", before finally, when...

COPENHAGEN – The race for the 2016 Olympics has come down to just Rio de Janeiro and Madrid, with the International Olympic Committee eliminating Chicago in a stunning first round of voting. Tokyo was knocked out in the second round. That left just Rio and Madrid still in the mix. The IOC voted again to separate the two and elected a winner, which will be announced by IOC president Jacques Rogge later Friday. Madrid's surprising success in reaching the final round came after former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch made an unusual appeal for the Spanish capital, reminding the IOC...

Spanish Prime Minister's Daughters Pictured For The First Time... Looking Like Goths [Pic in URL] [Pictures taken of the Spanish prime minister with his wife and daughters alongside Michelle and Barack Obama have caused a stir, not least because the teenagers look like goths] By Daily Mail Reporter 29th September 2009 The official photos, taken at the Museum of Modern Art where the Obamas were hosting a dinner, were uploaded onto the U.S. state department's Flickr page. Unlike the Obamas, Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has always tried to keep his daughters, Laura, 16, and Alba, 13, out...

Climate: As alternate-energy champ Spain's green economy slides into recession, a German professor says if American "climate illiterates" don't follow, the Copenhagen climate conference will fail. And the bad news is? King Canute, the Viking king of England, Norway and Denmark, was the legendary king whose sycophantic followers praised his power and wisdom. As the story goes, he once stood on the shore and commanded the waves to halt. Rather than exercising his ego, he in fact was giving his followers a lesson in reality — the power of man over nature is finite and inconsequential. In December, the world's...

Here's Barack and Michelle Obama with Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his family. The State Department uploaded it to Flickr. (What an unlikely sentence!) Whoops—no one in Spain has ever seen Zapatero's Goth daughters before! According to Zapatero, Spanish law allows him to prevent the Spanish media from running any photographs of his 16 and 13-year-old daughters Laura and Alba. For their privacy, see. And because maybe it would be considered weird for the PM to have goth daughters, but it totally shouldn't be. It is a natural part of life, becoming a teenaged goth. Click to...

Last week Barack and Michelle Obama hosted a reception for visiting foreign dignitaries at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Over the course of the evening, the president, whose "amazingly consistent" smile created a viral video, and first lady posed for over 130 photographs with their guests, all of which were later posted to the State Department's Flickr page. This caused a problem: Included was a shot of the Obamas posing with Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, his wife Sonsoles Espinosa, and two daughters, Laura, 16, and Alba, 13, who've never had photographs of themselves published previously...

MADRID — Spain's government Saturday approved a draft budget providing for tax hikes worth nearly 11 billion euros to rein in the deficit as it struggles with recession and Europe's highest jobless rate. "The sum of these measures will result in revenue of around 10.95 billion euros (16.07 billion dollars), or around one percent of our gross domestic product," Economy Minister Elena Salgado said after a cabinet meeting. Under the new budget, the main rate of value-added tax will rise from 16 percent to 18 percent and a lower rate from seven percent to eight percent, starting July 1. The...

Photo of Obama and Spain's First Children Causes a Stir September 25, 2009 04:53 PM ET | Paul Bedard, Alex Kingsbury | Permanent Link | Print By Alex Kingsbury, Washington Whispers Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was in for a rude shock if he thought the same privacy conventions that shield the children of public figures in his home country would extend to the United States. Zapatero brought his wife and two daughters along on his trip to New York for the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly, and on Wednesday he and his family posed...

Spain is sliding into a full-blown economic depression with unemployment approaching levels not seen since the Second Republic of the 1930s and little chance of recovery until well into the next decade

Spain is sliding into a full-blown economic depression with unemployment approaching levels not seen since the Second Republic of the 1930s and little chance of recovery until well into the next decade, according to a clutch of reports over recent days.

Spain Tips Into DepressionSpain is sliding into a full-blown economic depression with unemployment approaching levels not seen since the Second Republic of the 1930s and little chance of recovery until well into the next decade, according to a clutch of reports over recent days. Published: 10:28PM BST 24 Sep 2009The Telegraph (UK) Bull run is over: Spain is sliding into a full-blown economic depression akin to that seen in the 1930s Photo: AP The Madrid research group RR de Acuña & Asociados said the collapse of Spain's building industry will cause the economy to contract for the next three years,...

13 gold coins have been found, wrapped together, by the river in Córdoba If you know where to look, buried treasure can still be found in Spain. The latest find was not however thanks to a map marked with an ‘X’, but came as part of an archaeological excavation as part of new drainage works in Córdoba, close to the famous Roman Bridge in the city centre. 13 gold coins, escudos, from the reign of Carlos III, dated from 1776 to 1801, and wrapped in a cloth, were found under a layer of limestone which has kept them in a...

New course in the investigation of 3/11Manzano, Cornered by the Tedax and the Sentence Acquitting EL MUNDO [newspaper]Blow for Sanchez-Manzano. Tuesday, during his testimony, he admitted that he had destroyed evidence from the 3/11 attacks. Wednesday, before the judge, six TEDAX officers [TEDAX: Spanish National Police Explosive Disposal Unit] extended this information. Hours later, a forceful sentence acquitted EL MUNDO [newspaper] and Jimenez-Losantos [radio anchor] on their information and opinions on the matter.Olivia Moya | Luis del PinoThe investigation on the 3/11 attacks has taken a new course. In only two days the actions of the former [administrative] chief of...

In 1939 Lilly Cassirer Neubauer was desperate to escape Germany. She was a member of a prominent Jewish family of publishers and gallery owners, and as the Nazi oppression escalated, it was clear they would have to leave or die. Lilly was told there was only one way for her to obtain an exit visa. The family would have to hand over one of their most prized possessions: a Parisian street scene painted by Camille Pissarro. The work, an atmosphere depiction of a rain-soaked Paris boulevard, had hung on the walls of the family's Berlin and Munich homes since the...

September 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Dr. Esteban Rodriguez, spokesman for the organization Derecho a Vivir (Right to Life) recently said Spanish doctors are willing to face jail rather than kill unborn children under a new law. "We are willing to go to jail rather than following a criminal law," Dr. Rodriguez said, "and we are willing to commit the supposed crime of disobedience before the crime of abortion." Dr. Rodriguez was responding to comments made earlier by Minister of Justice, Francisco Caamano, who said that Spain's abortion law would not allow doctors the right to refuse to commit abortions. "We...

Russia to call tender for foreign helicopter carrier 11/09/2009 KALININGRAD, September 11 (RIA Novosti) - Russia plans to hold an international tender for the purchase of a helicopter carrier, involving France, Spain and the Netherlands, the country's Navy chief said on Friday. "I can confirm that negotiations are being held, but there is likely to be a tender," Adm. Vladimir Vysotsky said, adding that other countries could also be involved. He said there were no negotiations with the United States - "for understandable reasons," adding that the U.S. authorities were "highly sensitive" about the transfer of new technology, especially dual-purpose...

Watch link and cringe.... and this idiot walked it with a camcorder!

In 2008, Spain accounted for half the world's new solar-power installations in terms of wattage, thanks to government subsidies to promote clean energy. But late last year, as the global economic crisis worsened, the government dramatically scaled back those subsidies and capped the amount of subsidized solar power that could be installed. Factories world-wide that had ramped up production of solar-power components found that demand for solar panels was plummeting, leaving a glut in supply and pushing prices down. Job cuts followed. "The solar industry in 2009 has been undermined by [a] collapse in demand due to the decision by...

Most local school districts are not planning to broadcast President Barack Obama's speech to students Tuesday live in their classrooms. The typical approach is that of the Chester School District, which has opted to record the noon broadcast and make the recording available afterward to teachers who want to show it, rather than interrupt classes with a live showing. The Monroe-Woodbury School District is also recording the speech for potential viewing in kindergarten through eighth grade, while giving high school teachers the option of showing the speech live if it's pertinent to their courses. The White House has described the...

With highest jobless rate, Spain rallies Spanish stock index performing surprisingly strong, but some stay away By Barbara Kollmeyer, MarketWatch MADRID (MarketWatch) -- Judging by the amount of road work clogging up Spain's capital city currently, with Madrid practically being unearthed, you'd be forgiven for thinking you were in the midst of a dynamic and growing economy. However, that's anything but the case. Public works programs have been going on across Spain under the government's so-called "PlanE" bid to stimulate the bleakest economy in Europe, where the jobless rate hit 18.5% in July and is expected to top 20% in...

Spanish woman kills pedestrian in suicide leap Wed Sep 2, 6:42 AM BARCELONA, Spain (AFP) - A woman who committed suicide by jumping out of an eighth floor window killed a pedestrian who was walking along the street below, Spanish police said on Wednesday. The 45-year-old woman died instantly in the fall while the pedestrian succumbed to his injuries in hospital following the incident on Monday in the town of Viladecans, a suburb of Barcelona, a police spokesman said.

Primary schoolchildren are set to learn about Mexico up to the 1500s A row has erupted in Mexico after the government distributed a history textbook to primary schools which makes no mention of the Spanish conquest. The chronology of the text neatly avoids the issue by ending before the Spanish arrived in the early 1500s. Some opposition figures have seized on what they see as a calculated omission. The arrival of the conquistadors resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people and the colonisation of Mexico. On Monday, as 25 million children started the new school term,...

Madrid, Spain, Aug 20, 2009 / 01:55 pm (CNA).- Dr. Esteban Rodriguez, spokesman for the organization Right to Life (Derecho a Vivir) in Spain, responded yesterday to comments by the country’s Minister of Justice, Francisco Caamano, who said there was no room for a conscience clause in the new law on abortion.  “We are willing to go to jail rather than following a criminal law, Rodriguez said, “and we are willing to commit the supposed crime of disobedience before the crime of abortion.” “We will not kill our patients, nor will we commit a crime against the public health deliberately harming...

A large Spanish bank has won the bidding for Austin-based Guaranty Financial Group, according to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News. Federal regulators who have essentially been running Guaranty in recent months have chosen Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria as the buyer. The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News both said that regulators had chosen BBVA, citing unnamed sources close to the negotiations. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is expected to make the announcement Friday. Under the expected scenario, the FDIC will seize Guaranty, then sell most or all of it to BBVA. Guaranty’s financial condition has been deteriorating for...

The 27-year-old woman, who lives in Malaga, used the excuse to get a termination when she became pregnant after having an extramarital affair, police said. The woman, who is from Latin America and has not been named, told police that she had been followed by a masked man who forced her into the back of his car, drove her to scrubland, and raped her at knife point. But police became suspicious after inconsistencies in her story and because she failed to report the crime until two months after the supposed attack. She then took her police report to a medical...

French police have arrested three suspected Basque separatist militants in an Alpine ski resort, officials say. The men were reportedly armed and had false identity papers. Police arrested them in a raid on an apartment in Le Corbier Villarembert on Wednesday. One suspect, named as Alberto Machain Beraza, is thought to be linked to recent Eta bombings, including an attack in Majorca, Spanish media say. Eta has been blamed for more than 820 deaths during its separatist campaign. Eta claimed responsibility for the bombings in Spain in July, carried out just ahead of the 50th anniversary of the group's founding....

I was talking to my daughter at lunch today and she asked me if she had told me about what she had discovered about the Spanish fondness for cured ham. She said she had traveled all over Europe and did not see the cured hams that hang from the ceilings in the delicatessens as is common in Spain. Usually, in the smaller delicatessens they have about fifty to one hundred, "severed legs," as she calls them, hanging from the ceiling, each with a little paper cup hanging below to catch any grease that leeches out of the ham. Here is...

Francisco Caamano, Spain's Minister of Justice Madrid, Spain, Aug 14, 2009 / 04:13 pm (CNA).- The Collegial Medical Organization and various pro-life groups in Spain have strongly rejected statements by the country’s Minister of Justice, Francisco Caamano, who said Thursday that “there is no room for conscientious objection” when it comes to abortion.   The president of the Collegial Medical Organization, Dr. Juan Jose Rodriguez Sendin, said, “The right doctors have in Spain to conscientious objection is going to be respected, whether they like it or not, and it is better this is accepted on good rather than on bad...

Justo Gallego Martínez is building his very own Cathedral in Mejorada del Campo near Madrid, Spain This is no "model" cathedral and he is neither a qualified architect, nor engineer, nor bricklayer -- he is a farmer. "The plans have only ever existed in my head" and have evolved over time in response to opportunity and inspiration. Nor does he have formal planning permission from the authorities of Mejorada del Campo -- the town in which it is located (20 km from Madrid under the flight-path to the Barajas airport).Nor does he have the benediction or support of the Catholic...

Police have closed all airport and seaports on Spain's Majorca island to prevent the "terrorists" responsible for a bombing which killed two civil guards from escaping, the government said. Two civil guard officers were killed when their booby-trapped car exploded near a barracks on the island, local police said a day after a bomb in northern Spain injured dozens. "Two civil guard officers who were in an official vehicle were killed in an explosion," a spokeswoman for the civil guards said. "This means that departures from the port, airport and marinas in Majorca are closed for departures," the representative of...

By the Association for Aiding of the 3/11 VictimsForceful Complaint against Manzano for the Homicide Weapon of 3/11 The Association for Aiding of the 3/11 Victims has presented Wednesday a complaint against the former chief of TEDAX [bomb disposal unit], Sanchez-Manzano, for omission of his duty of persecuting crimes, cover-up by concealment of evidence and false testimony regarding the 3/11 attacks. ANGELA MARTIALAY Not very often a complaint reflects in so exact form and well related the facts that motivate it as the one written by the lawyer Jose Maria de Pablo. The Association for Aiding of the 3/11 Victims...