Madrid- Spanish giants Atletico Madrid announced Thursday the death of nine-year-old junior player Diego Alcala Rivero in Madrid's 12 de Octubre hospital after an accident.

The boy had been in the hospital's intensive care unit since Saturday, after the metal roof of the Atletico junior team's bench fell on him during a match in the Madrid suburb of Las Rozas.

He was rushed to hospital with severe head injuries/

Madrid - The Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica posted a net profit of 7.6 billion euros (9.7 billion dollars) in 2008, down 14.8 per cent from 2007 but above forecasts.

The 2007 profit had been boosted by extra income from the sales of subsidiaries such as Endemol and Airwave, the company explained Thursday in a press release.

Revenues grew 2.7 per cent to 57.9 billion euros in 2008. Business in Latin America compensated for a slower market in Europe, with Latin American revenues up 14 per cent.

Madrid  - Real Madrid are determined to recover from Wednesday's 1-0 Champions Cup home defeat against Liverpool by scoring their 10th straight win.

On Saturday they are away to lowly but unpredictable Espanyol, who pulled off the surprise of the season last Saturday by winning 2-1 away to leaders Barcelona.

"What we have to do now is start to think about how to beat Espanyol on Saturday," Real defender Gabriel Heinze said.

Easier said than done.

Madrid  - Will Spain remain united, or could regional strivings for more autonomy eventually tear the country apart?

Analysts seeking answers to that ever-present question will keep a close eye on Sunday's regional elections in the Basque region and Galicia.

The polls to elect 75-member regional parliaments will also help to gauge the general political atmosphere in the country hit by a deepening recession.

Madrid  - A corruption scandal affecting Spain's main opposition conservative People's Party (PP) widened Wednesday as a judge investigating the allegations implicated at least two legislators or senators in the affair.

National Court magistrate Baltasar Garzon asked anti-corruption prosecutors whether the Supreme Court should take over the case, because national-level politicians had become implicated, in addition to local or regional ones.

Garzon did not give the names of the new suspects.

Madrid - Spanish police could be about to solve one of the country's oldest terrorism-related criminal mysteries, press reports said Wednesday.

Police have now spent four months in the south-eastern French countryside looking for the remains of Publio Cordon, a businessman who is believed to have been kidnapped by the far-left group Grapo (Anti-Fascist Resistance Groups of the First of October) in 1995.

Cordon's family paid the abductors a ransom worth 2.4 million euros (3 million dollars). Grapo claimed to have released the entrepreneur in Barcelona, but he never returned home.