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News, September 2006More NewsA few more news items and where to find more news about Spain:Water reserves:In a second year of drought, water reserves are important. At 26th September the reservoirs were down to 39.2% of capacity (but only 31.4% over drinking water capacity). The situation remains critical in the South East. Reserves remain at the lowest levels ever and records for rainfall also lowest since records began. In particular, the Jucar river reservoirs, feeding the Costa Blanca, have just 4.4% of capacity, the Segura (Mar Menor) has 9.8%, Malaga has 13.6% and the upper Tajo area, Spains largest reservoir system, which could feed many parts of the south and east, has a mere 9.9%, now below the limit for allowing transfers to other regions (but up 0.1% on the week - first rise for months). Orchards and golf courses alike will probably soon be left dry in the region of Murcia (Segura basin), although rainfall over the past 2 weeks may give a reprieve to drinking water supplies as it trickles into the reservoirs in coming days. TechnologySpanish TV acoross the worldThe Spanish national station TVE has an international service with two channels. TVE Internacional and Canal 24 Horas. For information on how to view these channels, including the evangelical programme Buenas Noticias TV (which runs on Sundays), go to this link. The menu offers programme and technological details. Several other Spanish channels can be seen tuning into Hispasat, which covers much of the Americas. 93.9% of population have mobiles (cell phones)November '05. Spain is 4th in the mobile phone league, as there is now almost one line per inhabitant. Only Italy, UK and Taiwan have more lines percapita, while China is now the largest market overall. In Spain there are 38.6 million lines. Terrestrial Digital TV has started, 1st December '05 in Spain with 18 channels, to be followed by 2 more national and some regional and local ones.Dealers say that actually there are not so many channels yet in most districts. The service, which will give similar service and interactivity to digital satellite TV, will gradually grow from now and the analogue services will end in 2010. This means everyone will need to replace their sets -or get new digiboxes- within the next five years. The price of the decoder is about 60 Euros at present. It is estimated that currently there are 50 million sets in 12 million homes across Spain. 4.4 million Spaniards have Broadband accessOctober 2005. The number of Spaniards with broadband access is growing rapidly. Of the 4.4 million, almost 3.5 million are ADSL users, the remainder being cable. Well over 70% of all users (in fact 2,8 million) are linked directly or indirectly to Telefonica's ADSL service; (most other operators are actually resellers of this service!). Madrid and Barcelona have over 50% of users, while another 30% are in other cities. 9 provinces have less than 10,000 connexions. The urban/rural divergence is clearly growing and those who have access at all tend more than ever to be moving quickly to broadband. Only 15% of the territory is covered by ADSL, although Telefonica also offers a satellite link at 45€ per month. Telefónica claims 95% of installed lines can take ADSL, but AUI reckons the true percentage is more like 76%. Data from the Internet Users' Association. According to earlier official surveys by the National Statistics Institute in December 2002 the number of people with access to the Internet was only 17.4%, but a year later had grown to 24%. By the end of July '03, the number of ADSL lines was 1,343,823 with Madrid and Barcelona way ahead, emphasising the gap between town and country in technological advance. (El Mundo, TVE) A campaign run by the government between September 2004 and spring 2006 aims to improve rural internet access possibilites. In September 2004 still only 25% of homes have access to internet. El Mundo.es has almost 10 million unique monthly visitorsEl Mundo, as well as a very popular printed paper, is Spain's most widely read electronic news service and in June 2006 hit the 9.89 million unique readers mark, having crossed the 6 million mark in January 2005. The number increased rapidly over 2004, with events like 3/11 and the Royal Wedding, but slowed early in 2005, reaching 6,789,725 in July '05 and then climbing gradually over the past winter. Other papers lag, with dailies specialising in sport having most success: Marca has reached 3 million and www.as.com is now closing on 2 million, with the second general daily ABC also above the million. 'Circulation' stats are the speciality of OJD which can be read in English. From all the surveys of electronic media, it is clear that they are by far the most read among office workers. More info from OJD's media list. April 2005: The printed version of El Mundo has not suffered from its electronic daughter. In March it hit 1.387.000 copies sold daily, an increase of 5.6%, strengthening its posistion as Spain's nº2 daily newspaper. Nevertheless, this is still way behind El País, which sells over two million copies. The digital version of El País is, sadly, only available beyond the 'cover' by subscription. Yet neither of these papers sells as many as Marca, the sports daily, with over 2.5 million copies. Annual visits to P4S above 36,000September 29th, '06. P4S has clearly broken the 100 visits a day or 3000 per month barrier after a reasonable summer. Figures for the past 12 months give a total of 36,900 visits to PrayforSpain, or 116,400 pages downloaded involving over 220,000 hits. We hardly compare with El Mundo and attain an annual figure of about one month's worth of visits to Protestante Digital, but we may well be close to their English language visits. Now that PD has a counter on each of the English language articles, one can see that they don't get that many hits. (Nor do some of our pages, of course.) Thank you for your interest and support! Old News archivePast news is not all forgotten by P4S! Such items as can be found on the news pages at the end of every month are being filed in our archives. Your response and concerns are also of interest to us. Don't hesitate to let us know them Finally, more news from the churches is always available at the Protestante Digital and Protestantes sites:This week on Protestante Digital: (29th September)Theologian highlights comfort zone danger of State churches |