Trapped Boy
Rescuers racing to find a toddler who fell down a deep borehole nine days ago have finished drilling a parallel shaft, and will today start digging a horizontal tunnel to reach the spot where the child is thought to be trapped.
A group of specialist miners will be lowered down in teams of two and manually dig a four-meter gallery to connect with the borehole, a task that is expected to take around 24 hours.
Miners will use pneumatic tools and axes to dig the connecting tunnel, and support the roof with wooden beams as they go.
Hundreds of people are on site to help with the rescue operation, and many businesses have volunteered specialized equipment.
Drilling down has taken much longer than planned – 55 hours instead of the initial estimate of 15 – because of the hardness of the rock and the need for regular maintenance.
Christiano Ronaldo
Cristiano Ronaldo has cut a deal with a court in Madrid over tax evasion charges, accepting an €18.8m fine.
A huge media presence met the player outside the court, after a judge refused his request to appear by video or to enter the building by car to avoid the spotlight.
The deal, agreed in advance, includes a 23-month jail sentence.
But in Spain, convicts do not usually do time for sentences under two years.
The non-violent nature of Ronaldo’s offence means he is unlikely to spend any time at all in jail, serving it on probation instead.
The court appearance lasted mere minutes as Ronaldo accepted the deal offered by prosecutors.
Ronaldo, five-time winner of Europe’s Ballon d’Or was accused of avoiding paying tax in Spain between 2010 and 2014, when he was playing for Real Madrid and based in the capital.
The case centres around lucrative image rights deals. Prosecutors say the proceeds were funnelled through low-tax companies in foreign nations to avoid paying the required tax.
Teenager
The public prosecutor is demanding a four-year jail sentence and a one year supervision order for a 17 -year-old Dutch teenager accused of sexually assaulting two British girls.
Charly T, who has been in prison for the last five months, allegedly molested the girls, aged 12 and 14, on the Costa del Sol.
Unsafe PrisonLaw, an organisation which supports prisoners abroad said a conviction resulting from a trial, for which no date has been set, would be unsafe because there were no official interpreters present during the police investigation, and questions were not translated correctly from Spanish during a court hearing.
This ‘distorts the facts and has serious consequences for the defence’, the organisation claims.
Podemos
One of the founders of the anti-austerity Podemos party, Inigo Errejon, gave up his seat in parliament yesterday, sending the movement – a key ally of the ruling Socialists – into disarray months before regional and municipal elections.
Internal divisions in Podemos, could spell problems for Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
Errejon, who was second in command in Podemos announced that in next May’s election he would run for presidency of the Madrid region as part of an open political platform on the same ticket as Madrid mayor Manuela Carmena.
The move appeared to signal a complete break-up with the Podemos leader and once close friend Pablo Iglesias.