Driving forward

A BRAND­NEW study has revealed that Spain has the eighth­safest drivers in the world. The report by Compare The Market price comparison site was released on Friday, February 10, and had some surprising results.

The report assessed indicators of safety including speed limits, alcohol regulations, quality of motorways and annual deaths from traffic accidents to come up with an overall rating out of five.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Japan topped the list for driving safety partially thanks to the country’s low alcohol tolerance for drivers.

The Asian country came away with the top score of 4.57 out of five. However, aside from Japan, eight of the countries in the top 10 list were European countries.

Japan was followed by the Netherlands who similarly scored highly with 4.02 points and Norway with 3.99 points. The other countries to make the top 10 were Estonia, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Singapore and Portugal.

Spain made eighth place on the list with an impressive score of 3.72 thanks to a low rate of fatalities in car accidents and a good quality road network.

Dodging sanctions

RUSSIA’S invasion of Ukraine has caused many Western countries to issue broad packages of sanctions against the rogue nation. But one panel of experts has expressed their concern that in looking for new trading options, Russia is using the Spanish enclave, Ceuta, to dodge sanctions.

Oil industry experts spoke out on Friday, February 10, saying that Russia is using international waters around 20 kilometres from Ceuta as a strategic location to load and transfer oil cargos to transport onwards to China. In the past, these transfers were completed in ports in the United States or Denmark, but both countries have now imposed sanctions on Russia.

The experts believe that Russia has transferred between 600,000 and one million barrels of crude oil between ships in the ocean off Spain’s North African enclave.

Spain does not allow these ship­to­ship transactions in its waters, but it is believed that the transfers are taking place outside of Spain’s jurisdiction.

Spain is not permitted to act unless the ships cross into national water.

Dream jobs

A BRAND­NEW study completed by global financial service, Remitly, has revealed the most sought­after job in each country. And Spain’s most popular dream job might be a surprise to some.

In the report, Spain was the only European country to record an online role as the most popular dream job, with ‘online influencer’ being the top pick. By contrast, traditional jobs like ‘lawyer’, ‘firefighter’ or ‘teacher’ were the most popular dream jobs in most European countries.

The most popular dream job worldwide was ‘pilot’ with more than a million searches, followed by writer which saw more than 800,000 searches.