Madrid  - Athletic Bilbao and Mallorca forced their way into the semi-finals of the Spanish King's Cup on Wednesday, edging out Sporting Gijon and Betis in the quarters.

Bilbao battled out a 2-1 comeback win in Gijon, who had played out a 0-0 draw in Bilbao last week.

Carmelo gave Gijon the lead after just 30 seconds with a fierce drive, after good work by Diego Castro.

Madrid - Spanish police have detained six people in connection with a 600-million-dollar fraud on the London stock market, police said Wednesday.

Four of the suspects were held in Barcelona, one in Madrid and one in Elche in the south-east of the country.

The detainees were suspected of falsely advertising a company without real funds, the stock exchange value of which they increased through complex financial operations and falsifications, making large sums of money from the sales of its shares.

The company falsely claimed to being doing business with the Argentine government and to have funds in Brazil.

Madrid- Spain's second-biggest bank BBVA saw its net profit plunge by 18 per cent to 5.02 billion euros (6.5 billion dollars) in 2008, the bank said Wednesday.

Recurrent profit, however, rose by 0.2 per cent, despite the global financial crisis.

The result was influenced by factors including early retirement payments at its Spanish operations valued at 602 million euros and losses caused by alleged Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff valued at 302 million euros, BBVA said.

Madrid - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday called on rich coun

Madrid - Heavy rains sparked flooding Tuesday in northern Spain, while another death increased the number of fatalities claimed by storms to 16, officials and hospital sources said.

A 53-year-old man died at a Tarragona hospital on Monday after a wind gust pulled him down from his balcony on Saturday, hospital sources said.

The death toll thus climbed to 16 since Friday for the entire country.

Madrid - The volatile world economy has begun affecting international tourism, bringing its growth to a standstill in the second half of 2008, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) said Tuesday.

Overall, tourist arrivals went up 2 per cent to 924 million in 2008, according to preliminary figures released by the UN agency at its headquarters in the Spanish capital of Madrid.

But that growth was based on good results from the first six months of 2008. In the second half of the year, the financial crisis, oil and commodity price rises, and exchange rate fluctuations made tourism decline by 1 per cent.