A family that supplied firearms and weapons of war to organized crime is busted

A family that supplied firearms and weapons of war to organized crime is busted

The Mossos d’Esquadra have dismantled a family organization based in Barcelona that was dedicated to supplying firearms and ammunition to organized crime. The arms traffickers were led by the family father, a 37-year-old Spaniard, who directed the purchase and sale of material from prison, where he had been incarcerated since 2009, convicted of homicide. The investigation by the Mossos d’Esquadra coincided during one of their surveillances with investigators from the Policía Nacional who were on the trail of the same arms traffickers. The heads of both investigations created a joint group from that moment on.

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The unanswered questions left by the trial against the Pujol family

The unanswered questions left by the trial against the Pujol family

At 13:49 yesterday, May 14, the trial against the Pujol family and nine businessmen who allegedly paid them commissions in exchange for public works was submitted for judgment. 38 oral hearing sessions, in which more than 200 witnesses and experts have appeared. The trial closes 3,685 days after the visit of Victoria Álvarez, Jordi Pujol Ferrusola’s ex-lover, to the Canillas police complex, accompanied by the “patriotic police,” in which she explains that she saw with her own eyes how Pujol Ferrusola carried bags of cash to Andorra. It is December 13, 2012. The police investigation that started then, which was halted until El Mundo published seventeen months later information about the Pujol accounts in Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA) allegedly obtained by the Spanish police, ended with the entire family charged, as well as ten businessmen; since the hearing began last November, one of them, Carles Vilarrubí, has died, and former president Pujol was exonerated for health reasons. The rest await sentencing, possibly at the end of July, according to legal sources. All the accused plead not guilty. About 200 hours of oral hearing have not cleared up many of the case’s doubts.

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Beach plastic archaeology: ‘vintage’ objects without an expiration date (but with a return date)

Beach plastic archaeology: ‘vintage’ objects without an expiration date (but with a return date)

The commercial boom of pop and lovintage design can lead someone to feel nostalgia for some elements of the past. A bottle of Vernel, another of Delial, Yoplait yogurts, or the first Matutano ham-flavored chips. Faced with this reality, the nostalgic citizen can turn to collector websites to find these objects or — unfortunately — take a walk along the Spanish coasts. With a bit of luck, they might find designs from decades ago buried in the sand after being returned by the sea.

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Juan Ramón Lucas, journalist, 67 years old: “I get up at two thirty in the morning, I try to take a nap and I meditate every day to rest my mind and body”

Juan Ramón Lucas, journalist, 67 years old: “I get up at two thirty in the morning, I try to take a nap and I meditate every day to rest my mind and body”

Juan Ramón Lucas answers the phone from the car, on the way to Asturias, the place he always returns to whenever he can. At 67 years old, he gets up again between two and two-thirty in the morning to take charge of the mornings on Radio Nacional de España. He accepted the task as a personal challenge, fifteen years after having achieved the best ratings of the program. The price is the schedule, the fatigue, and the distance from his people; the reward, he assures, remains the daily pleasure of doing radio and his audience.

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Sudden Thaws in Mountain Glaciers: The Great Threat of Global Warming

Sudden Thaws in Mountain Glaciers: The Great Threat of Global Warming

The Nepal disaster clearly illustrates a problem that climate scientists have been warning about for years. The icy structure of the Himalayas is destabilizing, exposing millions of people to increasingly unpredictable dangers. “Warming can lead to more glacier collapses and more formation of glacial lakes that can collapse,” summarizes Ignacio López-Moreno, researcher at the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology. (CSIC).

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