Gately (right) with Boyzone bandmate Ronan Keating

Louis Walsh, the manager of Boyzone and X Factor judge, told one newspaper: ”We’re all absolutely devastated.” He added: ”I’m in complete shock. I was only with him on Monday at an awards ceremony. We don’t know much about what’s happened yet.

In a separate newspaper interview a close friend of the singer is reported as saying: “It looks like he went out for a few drinks, then got back, fell asleep and never woke up.”

The four remaining members of Boyzone are now due to fly to Palma.

Shane Lynch, a band member, told the News of the World: ”Me and the boys are flying out in the morning.”

A statement on Boyzone’s official website confirmed the Irish singer’s death.

It said: “Stephen tragically died yesterday whilst on holiday with his partner Andrew in Mallorca.”

“The rest of the boyz will be flying out today.”

Apart from singing with the Irish band Boyzone, Gately will be remembered for his rendition of Jesus in the touring musical Godspell.

Boyzone had 17 UK top five singles and four number one albums before splitting in 2000. They made a comeback tour in 2007, however their recent 19-date Better tour was deemed a flop as the band played to half-filled arenas.

Alex Hughes

A 16-year-old boy who has been in a coma since being attacked outside an Andratx nightclub has been flown to a hospital in his native Wales, reports the Press Association. Alex Hughes was on holiday with friends and their parents at the time of the assault on 2 August. It is believed he was hit over the head with a bottle.

Ever since the attack Alex has been in a coma in Palma Hospital and his condition has been described as stable but critical following an operation relieve pressure on his brain.

He was accompanied by his mother, Helen, on the flight back to the UK and is now in University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, where staff are assessing his situation.

Police in Mallorca, meanwhile, are looking for three males in connection with the attack.

Rafael Nadal

Mallorca born Rafael Nadal, known to millions as the former world No. 1 tennis player, is bound to excite his legions of fans when his latest promotional video comes out. In it, Nadal appears bare-chested at the wheel of a yacht as he sails around the Cabrera archipelago.

This will be the second instalment in a set of three promotional videos that the tennis player is making for the Balearic Ministry of Tourism. The video will be shown for the first time at the World Travel Market fair in London this November.

Nadal is reportedly receiving around six million euros to make the videos.

La Rigoleta restaurant on the Can Pere Antoni beachfront in Palma

Two small bombs went off today and a third was defused in locations across Palma. No one was injured in the explosions and there was little damage to property. A preliminary warning was given by Eta at around 11:00 in the morning, said to have been made from a telephone in France with the caller using a voice distorter. The information given in the call was said to be incorrect, in terms of the time and location of the blasts.

Government officials say that one bomb exploded in La Rigoleta restaurant on the Can Pere Antoni beachfront in Palma, and the second in an underground passage at the central Plaza Mayor square. Officers deactivated a third bomb left at Bar Enco. A search for a possible fourth bomb turned up nothing.

State-run broadcaster TVE said in an afternoon news bulletin that one of the bombs that exploded was in a beach bag hidden in the ceiling of a women’s bathroom in the restaurant.

The restaurant had been evacuated following two phone calls made to a taxi company in the Basque region, El Pais reports. The caller, who said he was calling on Eta’s behalf, warned of the bombs.

Eta recently claimed responsibility for the last week’s bombings in Palma Nova and Burgos, which killed three people. The group has been responsible for the deaths of 825 people since it began its violent struggle in 1968.

Maria Esther Garcia

In a letter published in a Burgos newspaper, Garcia also criticised the resources available to the Civil Guard, calling them ‘inadequate’. City barracks, she wrote, have no external monitoring or parking security. She recommended that more money be put aside to address these weaknesses.

But Garcia spoke warmly of the Civil Guard saying, “I give infinite thanks to the whole body of the Civil Guard, which has always given its support to us. I also thank the Mallorcan villagers and people of Burgos, the army and police, and the whole of Spain who wept for our son.”

Born in Burgos, northern Spain, Carlos Tejeda joined the Civil Guard last year at the age of 28. Recalling her son, Garcia said he was an unconditional supporter of Real Madrid, loved animals and had a special affection for his dog, Ron. A great patriot, the ring tone on Tejeda’s mobile phone was the Spanish national anthem.

Garcia went on to call the terrorists ‘sons of bitches’.

‘But that is not to excuse you,’ she went on, addressing the killers in her letter ‘I will not forgive you – I hate you.’

In a twist of fate, Tejeda’s cousin had been evacuated from his home following the bombing in Burgos the previous day.

The number of boats using ecological moorings has risen yet again. In 2008 the figure rose by 26% and the signs are that this rate of increase will carry on into 2009. According to Marine Director Tomeu Calafell the two most popular spots are at Porto Petro and Cala Blava, with demand surging at weekends.

Ecological mooring involves fixing a boat to a permanent buoy, thus eliminating the need for an anchor, which can damage the sensitive ecology of the sea floor as it gets dragged around.

Mallorca’s ecological moorings are a free service that have been operating since 2006, and Calafell estimates that around 17,000 vessels make use of them each season, with 40 percent of users at any one time doing so for the first time. Currently there are 725 ecological buoys around the island, with the aim of protecting the Posidonia sea meadows that are easily damaged by anchors. Calafell says that the results so far have been ‘very encouraging’.

The soaring demand has placed pressure on the Environment Department to construct more ecological moorings and produce a new design.

Hospital San Dureta in Palma has reportedly set aside a separate wing for people suffering from the Influenza A virus, commonly known as swine flu. Up to 30 people a day on the island have been presenting themselves in recent days with symptoms. Yesterday a total of 11 people were hospitalized under suspicion of suffering from the disease, of which four were later confirmed to be carriers.

The hospital is using space made available by the low summer season when traditionally there is a slowdown in surgery rates, but has denied that it has closed an intensive care unit specifically for this purpose.

Luis Figo has made it clear that he will not be coming out of retirement to play for the islanders.

The former FIFA World Player of the Year officially retired from football at the end of last season after four seasons with Inter Milan.

A reported salary of 3.5m euros per season was on offer for the 36-year-old winger, who has also played in Spain for both Barcelona and Real Madrid.

Speaking to reporters in Portugal Figo said “I’ve heard about the interest but the person who it came from isn’t even the president of the club yet.”

“My assistant knows about the interest from Mallorca, but at this moment my priority is to rest and I’m not thinking about getting back on the pitch.”

“If I wanted to continue playing football I’d have continued playing for Inter Milan.

“My future involves a different professional activity. I can’t say more at the moment, but after hanging up my boots it’s logical that I’m not going to stand still.”

Police are no closer to establishing who was behind the bomb attack on Thursday that killed two members of the Civil Guard. Although the main suspects remain Eta, terrorism experts in Palma are concentrating their efforts on investigating a number of radical groups on the Balearics.

The groups under suspicion, comprised mostly of young radicals, are linked to Catalan independence organisations. “We don’t believe these groups collaborated, at least consciously, with the terrorist group that attacked Mallorca – but you never know,” a terrorism expert told the Diario de Mallorca.

But if any collaboration had occurred it would not have been the first time. Last January several followers of the football club Atletico Balears were arrested and their homes searched. The home of one of them was found to contain correspondence with Eta terrorists in which the two agreed that they shared some common ideologies.

Sources close to the investigation told te Diario de Mallorca yesterday that so far there is no concrete evidence that home-grown radicals were cooperating with external terrorist groups but added that the attack would have been meticulously planned, which would have been difficult without the help of people familiar with the environs.

Police are investigating the discovery of the body of a newborn baby boy whose body was discovered shoved down an air conditioning vent at a villa complex in the ‘Sometimes’ zone of Palma. Local residents had earlier alerted police after reporting an unpleasant smell. Investigators discovered the body of a newborn child after looking down a ventilation shaft outside the bathroom window.

Removing the body proved to be difficult and fire fighters were forced to demolish a wall to retrieve it. Police say that the body they recovered was of a baby boy with the placenta and umbilical chord still attached.

The investigation will now determine whether the death was a homicide or whether the baby was born dead. The main assumption at present is that the baby was born about four days ago and then the mother pushed it down the ventilation shaft. An autopsy will determine whether the child was born alive or dead.

The National Police Agency say the assumed mother is a foreign national who returned to her home country immediately after the birth, but did not give any further details.

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