Almería news, blog, webpages, books, gossip, opinions, history & much more since 2001
NO COMPENSATION The Supreme Court has ruled that an insurance company does not need to pay out a €60,000 life insurance whose holder had died after playing a friendly game of paddle. His insurers refused to pay out claiming that the man’s death, caused by a pulmonary thrombosis after he damaged his knee, was “not an accident”. Although the family initially won the backing of a local court, the insurance company appealed and the Supreme Continue reading News in brief
CUSTOMER RELATIONS Civil servants at Roquetas del Mar municipal offices are being trained in “customer relationship” classes. Some 400 town workers are being offered the classes which will help them deal with difficult members of the public. The council recently installed panic button at key points after a social services worker was attacked by a member of the public. The council said it is all part of a plan to make offices safer places to Continue reading Some news
RAILWAY COMPENSATION The PSOE party in Almeria have officially asked the central government if it will pay compensation to Almeria for the delays in the construction of the high speed AVE railway. Party leader Jose Sanchez said that the central government should underwrite national air fares to Almeria airport to compensate travellers for the inconvenience of not having a true rail connection to the rest of the country. He accused the government of “taking the Continue reading News in brief
NIJAR SEAFRONT San José in Nijar is to get a new sea front promenade thanks for a 400.000 euro grant from the national government. Senator Rafael Hernandez (PP) said it was an important investment into a major tourism zone and would help improve tourism figures in an area that was economically dependent upon this sector. Work on the promenade started in 1999 but were cancelled for budget reasons in 2000 by the local council. Work Continue reading News across Almeria
Google News closed in Spain today because of a new law that would force it to pay publishers for linking to their site, and so Spanish newspapers (who mainly lobbied for the new law) have lost millions of page views a month. Which is why the AEDE (the association of newspaper editors that lobbied for the law in the first place) is now lobbying the government to, ah, force Google to reopen the service. Google Continue reading Spanish news publishers beg Google to put news back online
El Mundo says that the worldwide head of Google News was in Madrid recently and told senior politicians that if they went ahead with the proposed “Google Tax” he’d close the popular news service in Spain. Ironically enough, El Mundo is one of the big backers of the Google Tax…. Anyway, Congress went ahead and passed the first draft of the law today, meaning it now goes for a second vote before being enshrined in Continue reading Google planning to close news service in Spain?
So the Government’s new copyright law plans to allow news creators to charge news aggregators to use their stories. As part of the media buildup, the Government points to France or Germany, both of which have introduced similar laws recently. As I said yesterday, the new law is nonsense, pure pandering to elderly newspaper editors who don’t understand the Internet for short term political gain, and will stifle innovation whilst not touching the vast Internet giants Continue reading The Google News tax, and how it’s failed elsewhere in Europe
A cautionary tale now from Huércal de Almería, where local lady María del Carmen G. has just received a court decision ruling on a compensation claim from a fall in (wait for it) 2005. It seems María was crossing on a zebra crossing one fateful day when a car screeched round the corner and raced down the road at her. Rather than stand there and be run over by the louts, she legged it across Continue reading “Don’t run on broken surfaces” says Judge
http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs/ The British Library has put two million digitised pages from 19th century newspapers online, taking research out of its dusty reading rooms into people’s homes. The pay-as-you-go service brings a century of history alive from Jack the Ripper to WG Grace.