Madrid  - Florentino Perez does not speak, but he lets others do it for him - so much so that one gets the impression that his "entourage" is carrying out his campaign for the Real Madrid presidency, even if he has not even said he is a candidate.

Ramon Calderon resigned as club president on January 16, and since then a new electoral process is open at Real Madrid.

Madrid  - Barcelona edged past Mallorca late Wednesday in a dull Spanish King's Cup semi-final second leg and will meet euphoric Athletic Bilbao in the final.

Out-of-form Barca drew 1-1 at Mallorca and go into the final on a 3-1 aggregate, having beaten the islanders 2-0 in the first leg four weeks ago in the Camp Nou.

Earlier Wednesday, Bilbao powered their way into their first final since 1985 by thrashing dull Sevilla 3-0, to go through on a 4-2 aggregate.

Madrid  - Athletic Bilbao powered their way into the Spanish King'

Madrid - Spain's third-biggest daily ABC will cut its staff by about a half to 218 people, media reports Wednesday quoted its owner Vocento as saying.

The media group said the cuts were necessary to ensure the survival of ABC and to adapt it to market conditions.

In 2008, ABC had still been the only Spanish newspaper to strongly increase its distribution, which went up 10 per cent to 250,000 copies a day.

Madrid - Spain and Russia on Tuesday stressed the need to reach concrete results against the global financial crisis at the upcoming G20 summit in London.

Judicially binding agreements were needed, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said at a joint press conference with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero during a state visit to Spain.