IN BRIEF

MADRID, Spain (AP) Ä Several thousand fishermen pelted the Canadian Embassy with mackerel and eggs Thursday to protest alleged Canadian harassment of Spanish trawlers in the North Atlantic.

Reports that Canadian patrol boats had tried to cut the nets of two Spanish trawlers off Newfoundland late Wednesday raised the ire of the fishermen, who traveled in a bus convoy overnight from the northwestern port of Vigo.

Canadian officials emphatically denied the charges, and claimed the Spanish captains were trying to scuttle talks between Canada and the European Union with rumors.

The two sides have been trying resolve their month-long conflict over limits on turbot fishing in negotiations in Brussels, Belgium. The uproar caused the talks to be suspended for a day.

In Madrid, police with plastic shields formed a cordon in front of the embassy as residents leaned out windows to watch. There were no reports of arrests or injuries.

Before the demonstration, embassy officials hurriedly hauled in the red and white Maple Leaf flag out front.

NEW YORK (AP) Ä Tired of that tattoo? Looking for a proctologist? Cockroaches overrunning your apartment? For generations, advertising placards inside subway cars have offered solutions to life's big questions.

But soon, even these tidbits illustrating the New York psyche may disappear as yet another of the city's rough, idiosyncratic edges gets ground down to a corporate gloss.

Beginning next week, big-name advertisers will get to fill the inside wall of a subway car with their messages.

Instead of the strip of individual, sometimes garish, posters that now extend across the tops of the windows, a panoramic ad will take up that space.

Nike and Levi Strauss are among the big names that have signed on for the monolithic ad space, said Doug Watts, vice president of market development for Gannett Transit, which sells the advertising space under contract to the transit authority.

By the end of April, the little guys will be on just one car per train.

''If you're trying to advertise your sneakers or whatever, you want to get your message across without a lot of clutter,'' said transit spokesman Tito Davila.

Read Next Article