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Bloemfontein, South Africa - The Spanish national team beat Iraq 1-0 in Group A of the Confederations Cup Wednesday to notch their 14th victory on the trot, joining Brazil, France and Australia teams as record-holders of the longest consecutive streak of international victories.

They also moved to within one of equalling Brazil's record for most matches unbeaten in a row. Spain have now gone 34 games without defeat, a streak that started with a
1-0 victory over England in February 2007. Their last loss was to Romania in November of the previous year.

Berlin - In a first debate Wednesday, most members of Germany's parliament were supportive of up to 300 airmen serving on NATO airborne command posts in the skies over Afghanistan.

About one third of the aircrews, maintenance engineers and other staff working with the NATO planes will be German. The airborne warning and control system (AWACS) planes will mainly supervise military air traffic.

Bloemfontein, South Africa - As the Iraqi national anthem played ahead of Wednesday's Group A contest with international heavyweights Spain, a group of brightly coloured balloons was released. It carried a small version of the red, white and black Iraqi national flag high into the air and out of the stadium.

Berlin - German legislators spoke out Wednesday in parliament in support of the protests in Iran against last week's election result in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared re-elected.

During the snap debate, Johannes Jung, a Social Democratic supporter of the German government, demanded that Tehran free arrested demonstrators, investigate the deaths in the course of the clashes and permit free reporting about the conflict.