Voting has ended in Spain’s hotly contested general elections and the nation holds its breath until all the ballots are counted.

Exit polls indicate that PM Mariano Rajoy’s governing centre-right Popular Party (PP) has won the most seats.

Madeleine McCann’s parents may launch a new privately funded search for their daughter after the Metropolitan Police announced in October that Operation Grange is to be scaled down.

Kate and Gerry McCann have £750,000 remaining in their ‘No Stone Unturned’ appeal fund and may use it to hire private detectives to follow leads and get answers to pending questions.

A power station in the French Alps is generating electricity by using skimmed whey, a by-product of locally crafted Beaufort cheese.

Bacteria added to the whey convert it into biogas, a combination of methane and carbon dioxide. The biogas is then used to create electricity.

Drivers in Britain caught using their mobile phones are likely to face steeper fines and more penalty points on their licences.

The crackdown was outlined by Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin, who said the tougher rules would form part of the government’s new road safety plan, to be published this week.

The new Foreign Affairs Minister, Augusto Santos Silva, said today that the Banif situation showed "how illusory were the supposed truths underlying the right-wing propaganda" and said the time for election fantasy is over.
 
"It is not true, nor was it ever true, that the financial system, in particular the banking system, had been corrected by the intervention of the Troika.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Paulo Portas says that if TAP is re-nationalised by the Socialist Party it will be a permanent threat to the taxpayer.

The leader of the CDS-PP, said it sends out the wrong signal to impose a political ideology on the TAP ownership issue and argued that without privatisation the company will always face threats to its future.

Not for the first time, Spain looks like following in the footsteps of its much smaller neighbour.

It’s not quite on the grand scale of the Spanish taking their cue from the Portuguese in the Age of Discoveries, or in switching from dictatorship to democracy in the 1970s.

Several large bales of hashish have washing up along the Algarve coast between Lagos and Sagres.

The first bale appeared on Tuesday at Meia Praia, the next day at Praia da Pinhão and on Thursday at Martinhal.