Society

About 50 people have been detained in two major police operations in Barcelona?s subway since May. Minor robberies have been a constant problem in the few last years.

The city of Barcelona plans to be the frontrunner of the electric car industry in Catalonia. Under the public-private initiative ?Live Barcelona?, the city will take many steps to promote the use of electric vehicles.

A new technique has been put into place that enables more precise irradiations, affecting surrounding organs less and thus minimising secondary effects. The Catalan monographic hospital is the 2nd in Spain to use this technique.

The Catalan capital has just become ?twins? with another city in the world, the Californian city of San Francisco. Ignasi Cardelús made an agreement with the San Francisco mayor on Monday recognising the cities commonalities.

According to a Greenpeace study, the situation of the Catalan coast is delicate. Not considering the already protected shores, 89% have the presence of buildings.

Tragedy in Barcelona?s Tibidabo amusement park. The pendulum ride attraction falls, resulting in 1 girl dead and 3 other minors injured. An investigation will look into the exact causes of the tragedy.

There has been a drop in mortality in Catalonia despite a growing population. The Minister for Health, Marina Geli, says this might be an effect of speedier emergency services.

A university study from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona concludes that the intensity of hurricanes will never be possible to predict with an accuracy of 100%. The study has been published in the prestigious journal ?Nature Physics?.

With a helicopter, ENDESA is checking the entire Girona province?s medium tension electric network and has found 50 weak points so far. This operation is being pursued to prevent damage from past collapses of the electrical network, especially in the Cost

The UAB and Angola?s Universidade José Eduardo dos Santos have reached an agreement to build the first research and technological centre of the African continent focused on the agri-food sector, which aims to foster the Angolan and Sub-Saharan industry.

A group of investigators at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) have created a device that sends information about the nearest available parking space through the Internet.

A student group at the University of Girona has placed first in a European wide competition of robotic submarines. The robotic submarine they built has various capacities, including being able to pass through doors and follow walls.

Six out of every ten European scholarships for R+D programmes assigned to the Spanish state are allocated in Catalonia, who leads investigation in the field.

This summer, cameras and patrolling guards will be emplaced in rest areas of the Barcelona metropolitan region?s highways to prevent robberies.

Catalonia has begun an initiative with Belgium?s Francophone part to make studying abroad applied technologies easier. The agreement is similar to that of Erasmus, and is designed to aid in student?s vocational education and training.