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BARCELONA, Spain — The Latest on the Spain attacks (all times local): 5:40 p.m. A police official in Spain says an imam whose home was searched as part of the investigation into two deadly vehicle attacks is believed to be the radicalizing force behind the cell of young men — and is now thought to have died in an explosion linked to the attacks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal details of the new suspicions surrounding imam Abdelbaki Es Satty . Officials in Es Satty’s former mosque in the northern town of Ripoll, which he left abruptly in June, on Saturday denounced the attacks in Barcelona and a nearby seaside town . The mosque president , Ali Yassine, said Es Satty told him he wanted to return to Morocco for three months and hasn’t seen him since. The police official says Es Satty is believed to have died in an explosion Wednesday that destroyed a house south of Barcelona. The day after an attack killed 13 people in Las Ramblas in Barcelona, locals try ...

BARCELONA, Spain The Latest on the Spain attacks (all times local): 11:30 p.m. Police in the southern French city of Nimes have arrested a man unlawfully carrying a pistol into a train station, but say he is not linked to the attacks in Barcelona. After an evacuation and police operation at the train station Saturday night , the historic city quickly returned to normal, with police returning to their posts. A national police spokesman said the operation began when a passenger alerted police to a man with a weapon. Police quickly found and arrested him, said the spokesman, who was not authorized to be publicly named. The spokesman said the man has no apparent connection to Thursday's attacks around Barcelona, about 380 kilometers southwest of Nimes. French authorities increased checks of its border with Spain after the attacks, and one suspect is believed at large. 10:50 p.m. Catalan regional police say they are mounting major road blocks throughout the northeastern regio...

T he young men on powerful motorbikes had been coming and going for months, the throbbing sound of Kawasaki engines and the scattering of stones on the track leading to their country house in Alcanar, eastern Spain, announcing their arrival. Neighbours doubted the men, mostly young-looking and all seemingly of north African origin , had rented the house as a holiday home – despite the views out across the sparkling Mediterranean from this ramshackle estate of properties surrounded by scrub, pines and small olive groves . But they knew that Banco Popular had repossessed it and, having lived through a destructive, loan- fuelled property crash , Spaniards tend not to feel much concern when such properties are squatted. “Perhaps someone should have called the police,” said Carmen Circiumaru, who lives a few doors away. “But they never did anything that seemed especially suspicious.” Indeed, the young men, and at least one older, bearded man who sometimes appeared here, were quiet and respe...

In the summer of 1995, Doug Robb and his friends snuck into Agoura High School in the middle of the night. Dressed in all black, they found the set of portable stages their alma mater used for its commencement ceremonies and wheeled them through a dirt track and onto the beds of pickup trucks they’d borrowed for the occasion. The next day, they set up the foldout stages in Robb’s parents’ backyard to play their first show as Hoobastank, a metal- influenced band they’d formed about six months prior. Robb eventually returned the stages to the school, but not before using them during a massive rager that attracted teens and 20-somethings from all over the area. Among them were the then-unknown members of Incubus and Linkin Park—bands that, along with Hoobastank, would go on to produce some of the biggest hits of the next century. What could’ve easily been just another house party thrown by bored kids in a wealthy LA suburb turned out to be the beginning of a rock-music scene that was...