Spain

Lakers star Pau Gasol scored 19 points and had eight rebounds Monday to lead world champion Spain over Lithuania, 84-70, in the second round of the European basketball championship at Lodz, Poland. With Spain trailing, 24-15, at the start of the second quarter, guard Rudy Fernandez of the Portland Trail Blazers made a three-pointer to spark a 25-3 run over the next seven minutes that put Spain ahead, 40-27. The world champions continued to get out on the fastbreak, and led by 24 in the fourth quarter before pulling most of their starters.

World champion Spain defeated Greece, 82-64, on Saturday at Katowice, Poland, to advance to the European basketball championship final against Serbia. The win gives Spain, a six-time tournament runner-up, another shot at its first European title today. Serbia beat Slovenia, 96-92, in overtime behind 32 points from Milos Teodosic . Spain held Greece without a point for the first four minutes of the second quarter to open a 34-24 lead that Greece couldn't get below seven points.

The Spanish government will receive detailed information about a shipwreck site where a Florida company found $500 million worth of coins and artifacts last year, a federal judge ruled Thursday. Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. will reveal the location of the shipwreck and items found onboard, U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Pizzo said. The company will also disclose the locations of two other wrecks, he said.

A court employee married to the main judge in the Madrid bombings trial was fired Wednesday for writing a book that divulged confidential information about the case. The General Council of the Judiciary dismissed Elisa Beni from her job as spokeswoman for a Madrid regional court. The panel lost confidence in Beni because she used information obtained from her husband, said a council official.

A Spanish judge Wednesday indicted 40 Rwandan army officers on charges of mass murder and crimes against humanity in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, asserting a concept of justice championed by his nation known as "universal jurisdiction." Judge Fernando Andreu of Spain's National Court said he also had sufficient evidence to implicate current Rwandan President Paul Kagame in a long string of reprisal massacres after he and his forces seized power, ending the genocide.

The alert came from an informant who warned of impending suicide attacks on the Barcelona subway. And because the suspected bombers thought the spy was ready to die with them, officials say, he urged authorities to act fast. The paramilitary Guardia Civil raided mosques and apartments in port neighborhoods housing one of mainland Europe's largest Pakistani communities. A judge jailed 10 suspects.

Amid a bitterly divisive campaign for next month's national elections, the Spanish government is cracking down on Basque separatists and their potential ballot-box voice with a string of arrests and the banishing of political parties. The police and judicial actions underscore a sobering backdrop to the March 9 elections: the collapse of a landmark truce with the armed Basque organization ETA that had appeared to have ended the decades-old conflict.

Spain's most prominent Roman Catholic priests have stepped into the center of a bare-knuckle election campaign here, igniting a firestorm by seeming to tell voters how to cast their ballots. The powerful Spanish Bishops Conference, in a recent widely disseminated "message to the public," reminded Catholic voters of their duty to defend traditional values and to elect leaders "responsibly" when they go to the polls Sunday. Catholics make up the vast majority in this country.

When they voted in national elections four years ago, Spaniards were both traumatized and energized. Their country had just suffered continental Europe's deadliest terrorist attack, and millions of voters were angry. A very different and bitterly divided Spain returns to the polls Sunday. Many Spaniards are weary of the endless fighting that has consumed politicians pushing diametrically opposed agendas, and frightened by a once-robust economy's signs of stumbling.

A fossil jawbone, rudimentary tools and animal skeletons from a cave in Spain extend the earliest occupation of Europe by human ancestors back to as much as 1.3 million years ago, half a million years earlier than previously believed, researchers reported Wednesday. The findings suggest that early hominids swept out of Africa, through the Near East and into Europe much more rapidly than previously believed, said Spanish researchers who reported the find in the journal Nature.