RojaDirecta has been legally controversial because the website contains direct links to video feeds of live soccer matches in Spain and elsewhere around the world. At the same time, its legal status was already challenged twice in Spain, and both times the courts found in their favor.

So far the DHS has not commented on exactly what prompted to seizure of the website, but it seems that faced with the reality that the Spanish government could not legally censor the website, the US has decided to extra-legally do so.

The most curious aspect is that the website exclusively offered European soccer matches, a sport that is not particularly popular and only rarely broadcast within the United States. It seems unlikely then that the DHS was acting on behalf of an US interests seeking to prevent the showing of such matches, as there probably weren’t any.

Malki says he was recently assured by Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez that the European Union would likely recognize Palestine in early September, and that if they did not Spain would unilaterally do so.

Indeed Palestine is already recognized by a large number of states since the 1988 Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Palestine, though the depths of this recognition varies from nation to nation. A number of South American nations, including Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, have recognized them in recent weeks.

The renewed interest has come in the wake of failing peace talks, but has resulted in rebukes from the US State Department, which insists any recognition of Palestine is “unacceptable” until Israel, which still occupies the territory of the would-be nation militarily, agrees to it.

Zapatero’s first term in office was won largely on opposition to the Iraq War, and he withdrew all the Spanish troops from Iraq shortly thereafter. Faced with criticism over his handling of the internal ETA conflict, the prime minister re-raised the issue of the Iraq War, condemning the invasion as “illegal.”

This was of serious concern to the Bush Administration which warned him that they were “running out of patience” with his public criticisms of the war, even though this is nearly three years after Spain had ended its participation in it. Then-ambassador Eduardo Aguirre is said to have accused Zapatero of being unfair in bringing the US and Britain into his criticism of the invasion of Iraq, saying Zapatero should focus exclusively on internal political rivals.

The cable ends with a warning to Zapatero to “tone down” his criticism of US foreign policy, and a note that Deputy Envoy Hugo Llorens (now ambassador to Honduras) intended to warn other top members of Spain’s ruling party not to publicly criticize the US invasion of Iraq in their campaigns.

“$10 million, that’s also my figure,” the Mali MP confirmed, adding that the Spanish government paid the entire amount. The two hostages were seized in Mauritania in November.

The AQIM group is now a formal regional auxiliery of al-Qaeda, but had operated prior to that as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). The group operates largely around the Saharan Desert, and engages in kidnapping and killings across northern Africa.

The freeing of Spain’s aid workers stands in stark contrast to a French engineer they had captured, who was executed after a failed attempt by the French military to rescue him in a raid on a desert compound.

In the wake of the raid, which reportedly took place along the Malian border, French officials said the status of the hostage was unknown. Now it is known that AQIM killed the hostage engineer in retaliation for the raid.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has expressed outrage at the killing, declaring AQIM an “odious” group for having done so, and vowing revenge for the killing.

Yet the revenge attacks will likely concern neighboring Spain, which has two hostages of its own in AQIM’s possession, and has expressed annoyance that the French government conducted the apparently ill-considered rescue attempt without coordinating with them. The two captured Spanish citizens are aid workers, who have been held since November.

It has been reported that Hamas has offered a year-long, renewable ceasefire in the Gaza Strip if Israel will withdraw its forces in the next week, but Israel has insisted it would never accept to any temporary ceasefire in the strip.

In spite of this, Palestinian sources claimed both sides agreed to a general outline for the ceasefire, and a two-week truce would begin, likely in the next 72 hours, to allow time to finish up the agreement. Yet the Spanish Foreign Ministry, which has been involved in the negotiations, denied that the reports were accurate, saying they had no “information from Hamas” to support it.