A BRITISH woman who confessed to suffocating her two small children with a plastic bag in a Lloret de Mar hotel has been jailed.
Lianne Smith, 43, claimed she was worried about the Spanish social services taking Rebecca, five, and Daniel, 11 months, away from her after her husband was extradited last month.
The couple had been living in a flat in Barcelona ever since Martin, one of the UK’s most wanted paedophiles, fled Great Britain to escape the course of justice. Authorities in the UK say Martin Smith, 45, is accused of 13 counts of sexual abuse of minors, including that of one of Lianne’s daughters from a previous marriage.
The mother fled Barcelona with her two children and hid out in the Hotel Miramar in Lloret de Mar, fearing she would lose the children.
A judge has ordered that she be kept in custody without bail, given the possible risk of her absconding due to having no family or ties in Spain.
She is said to have been non-communicative throughout the entire process of her arrest, ‘only speaking when spoken to’. The preliminary hearing took four hours. Mrs Smith faces between 15 and 20 years in jail for each of the murders.
Her lawyer refused to comment when approached by reporters.

The European Union is investigating speculative trading in the government-bond market, in particular in the securities of Spain and Portugal.
“There is work in progress within the European Commission on these developments, especially in recent days,” Amadeu Altafaj, spokesman for EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn, told reporters in Brussels last month. “I cannot tell you more about this at this point in time, but we are doing the necessary in order to clarify some developments in the markets.”
“I don’t want to over-exaggerate the role of these market forces or to demonise them,” Altafaj said.
Shaken by soaring bond yields in Portugal and Spain, as well as a slide in the euro, European policy makers unveiled an unprecedented loan package worth almost $1 trillion to stop a sovereign-debt crisis from spreading. Spanish and Portuguese bonds rallied, the euro strengthened and stocks surged around the world.
The 16 euro nations agreed to a package of as much as 750 billion euros of financial aid, including International Monetary Fund backing, to countries facing instability and the European Central Bank said it will buy government and private debt. Spain and Portugal both agreed to take extra measures this year and next to cut their deficits, which are among the highest in the euro region.
The announcements “by Spain and Portugal are very much welcomed,” Altafaj said. “All fiscal consolidation efforts, and in particular in those countries who were in recent days under more fierce speculative attacks, are very important.”

 A volcanic ash cloud from Iceland closed down airports in Spain, the Canary Islands and parts of Morocco last month, and was set to spread further to southwestern France, Eurocontrol said.
“Airports on the Canary Islands, some in south-west Spain and some in Morocco were closed,” said the intergovernmental agency which coordinates air traffic control across Europe.
“According to the forecasts, areas of higher ash concentration could move in a north-easterly direction cutting across the Iberian Peninsula and into south-east France,” it added in a statement.
However the threatened areas were of high altitude and not expected to affect airports.
The eruption of the Eyjafjoell volcano in Iceland, which caused travel chaos worldwide with airspaces closed across Europe for a week last month, had again caused travel delays in recent days with “significant re-routings” of transatlantic flights, it said.
High concentrations of the ash pose a threat to plane engines.
In good news for the aviation industry and travellers, work from the British Meteorological Office and Civil Aviation Authority has allowed more accurate pinpointing of the areas where ash concentration could be above engine tolerance levels.

Spanish telecommunication giant Telefonica said it had offered to acquire Portugal Telecom unit Brasilcel for 5.7 billion euros by buying the 50 percent stake it does not already own.
The unit is 50 percent owned by Telefonica and 50 percent by Portugal Telecom. Brasilcel controls 60 percent of the Brazilian mobile telephone group Vivo Participacoes SA.
The Telefonica offer expires June 6, the Spanish group said.

Spain’s high-profile judge Baltasar Garzon denied any wrongdoing in ordering wiretaps in a probe into a corruption scandal involving members of the main opposition party, lawyers said. The case is one of three involving Garzon currently being examined by the Supreme Court and over which he risks being suspended from his post.
Speaking before Supreme Court Judge Alberto Jorge Barreiro, he denied accusations of “malfeasance” for having ordered the wiretaps as part of a probe into corruption by members of the conservative opposition Popular Party and a group of businessmen, lawyers for the complainants said.
Three of the suspects in the scandal accuse him of ordering the wiretaps of their conversations with their lawyers in violation of their rights.
In another case, a Supreme Court judge last month indicted Garzon for alleged abuse of power for opening an investigation in 2008 into the disappearance of tens of thousands of people during the 1936-39 civil war and General Francisco Franco’s subsequent right-wing dictatorship.  The judge argued that the probe ignored an amnesty law agreed by political parties in the spirit of national reconciliation in 1977, two years after Franco’s death, for crimes committed under the general’s rule.
Garzon has argued that the disappearances constituted crimes against humanity and were therefore not covered by the amnesty. He has appealed the Supreme Court’s indictment, which has been condemned by human rights groups such as Amnesty International.
The 54-year-old judge has also been questioned over accusations of bribery and perverting the course of justice in connection with his shelving of a tax fraud case against the head of Spain’s Santander bank, Emilio Botin, and other directors. He has also denied any wrongdoing in that case.
Garzon made world headlines in October 1998 when he ordered the arrest of Chile’s former strongman Augusto Pinochet in London under Spain’s principle of “universal jurisdiction.”
He also indicted Osama bin Laden in 2003 for the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and looked into the deaths of Spaniards in Argentina during the military regime of 1976-83.

Spanish narcotics agents nabbed two men dressed in pilot uniforms, complete with caps and insignias, trying to smuggle 55 kilos of cocaine through Madrid airport, police said last month.  The duo arriving on a flight from Santa Cruz in Bolivia caught the eye of Spanish narcotics agents because they were traveling with passengers and not with airline personnel, police said in a statement.
A check of their documents revealed that the two, whose nationality was not disclosed, did not fly for any airline and then 50 packets of cocaine, weighing some 55 kilos, was discovered in their carry-on baggage.
Spain is a main entry point for South American cocaine bound for sale in Europe. The drug barons often use boats to bring in large quantities of the illegal substance, but also try to sneak drugs in on regular airline flights.

Australian Mark Webber won the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuito de Montmeló in Catalunya, as McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton lost second place in a dramatic finish.
Webber started in pole position and led from start to finish, but Hamilton had out-raced Sebastian Vettel in the other Red Bull before a puncture forced the Englishman out.  McLaren said after the race that they thought Hamilton’s left-front puncture had been caused by debris on the track first damaging the wheel.  Hamilton’s sudden exit on the penultimate lap promoted Spain’s Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari to second, ahead of Vettel, who also hit trouble in the closing stages.
Alonso told the press: “It was a fantastic weekend for us, some unexpected positions. But we saw we need to improve the car.   “Sometimes we will be third, sometimes we will be fifth, sometimes we will be first. As long as we do 100% each time we can be satisfied, so we have to be happy with this race.”
Mercedes’s Michael Schumacher was fourth from Jenson Button’s McLaren.   Felipe Massa’s Ferrari took sixth, just over a second behind Button, while Force India’s Adrian Sutil held off the Renault of Robert Kubica for seventh.
Rubens Barrichello was ninth for Williams after driving a superb first lap to jump up from 17th on the grid to 12th, with Toro Rosso’s Jaime Alguersuari promoted to 10th by Hamilton’s misfortune.
The result has tightened an already close championship battle. Button retains his lead, but it has been cut to just three points by Alonso, who jumps from third to second.  Vettel is 10 points adrift of Button in third place, and a further seven ahead of Webber.  Hamilton, who would have been just a point behind Button if he had finished second, is sixth, 21 points off the lead.

Spain’s foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, whose country currently holds the EU chair, said a trillion-dollar deal to rescue euro countries was one in the eye for speculators.
“I hope that this will mean the end of the battle” against speculators, Moratinos said as European Union foreign ministers gathered for planned talks in Brussels, with markets surging on the back of the news.
As one of the countries most at risk after Greece, Spain hopes the deal, officially running to more than 750 billion euros with IMF input and central bank backing around the world, will represent a game-changing financial war chest.
It is a reply to “all those who try to drag down the economic and financial situation in the EU,” he stressed.

Two detonators were found in the letterbox of a Spanish judge in the restive Basque country last month, apparently designed to intimidate as no explosive was attached, a regional police spokesman said.
The devices and a cable which was also found were not immediately attributed to a nationalist urban guerrilla close to the armed separatist group ETA, but the regional interior ministry said there seemed to be a “logical” link between the two. The find was made in the port city of San Sebastian.
A small improvised bomb exploded near a Telefonica branch office in the Basque town of Llodio on April 17 but no one was hurt.  ETA, which is blacklisted by the European Union and the United States, is blamed for the deaths of 829 people in a four-decade campaign of bombings and shootings to demand a Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France.

People in Spain are apparently some of the happiest in Europe according to a survey of 12,500 people carried out by Coca-Cola in 16 countries across the globe.
Romania is the only European country where people are apparently happier than those in Spain, where friends, partners and the family are evidently the principle sources of people’s good cheer.
According to the survey, 89% of young Spaniards are happy with their lives and chatting with their friends is the best moment of the day for almost half of them, followed by chatting over the internet (28%), listening to music (24%) and having a meal with the family (22%).
The Happiness Barometer, which put young people in 16 different countries across four continents to the test, showed that food and friends were a fundamental part of most Spaniards’ happiness.
Personal relations are essential to Spaniards’ cheeriness, with 67% of adults saying that their partner is the greatest source of happiness for them, 51% quoting the family and 16% saying that their work gives them pleasure.
Spain was the eighth happiest country overall, beaten by Mexico, the Philippines, Argentina, South Africa, Romania, the United States and Brazil.
The results also reveal that, despite the worldwide recession, general global levels of happiness are high: two thirds of those surveyed (67%) said they were happy with their lives. 

US President Barack Obama spoke to Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero last month to discuss the debt crisis and reforms needed to rescue the Spanish economy, the White House said.
The conversation was the latest intervention by Obama in the European debt crisis, and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the US government would do whatever was needed to stop the eurozone turmoil from impacting the US recovery.
Obama called Zapatero because Spain was one of the nations which need to carry out reforms to stabilise its economy, Gibbs said.
Obama spoke to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy as European Union finance ministers unveiled a massive bailout plan to shelter the continent’s weaker economies.
Gibbs described the measures as “necessary, needed, and we’re glad they happened.”

Spain eased out of recession with 0.1 percent growth in first quarter compared to the preceeding quarter, the government statistics’ office said in a preliminary report.
The figures from the National Statistics Office confirmed a provisional report from the Bank of Spain released last month.
Spain, Europe’s fifth largest economy, entered its recession in the second quarter of 2008 as the global financial meltdown compounded a crisis in the Spanish property market, which had been a major driver for growth in the preceding years.
The economy continued to contract until the fourth quarter of 2009 when it shrank 0.1 percent, according to the statistics office.
Year on year, the economy shrank 1.3 percent from the first quarter of 2009, it added.
Spain is the last major world economy to emerge from recession.
The socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is targetting a 0.3 percent reduction of economic growth for all of 2010 after a 3.6 percent contraction last year.

BRITISH pop veterans Supertramp has announced four concerts in Spain as part of its upcoming tour to celebrate 40 years in the industry.
In total, the group, although without member Roger Hodgson, will perform 35 times in 11 countries.
Their tour of Spain will kick off on September 11 this year in A Coruña (Galicia), before moving on to Madrid’s Palacio de Deportes on September 15.
The UK rockers will then perform on September 17 in Bilbao, and the following day at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona.
In addition to founder member and soloist Rick Davies, the group comprises John Anthony Helliwell (saxophone), Bob Siebenberg (drums), and veterans from previous tours such as Jesse Siebenberg (vocals, percussion and guitar), Cliff Hugo (bass), Carl Verheyen (guitar) and Lee Thornburg (trumpet).
Supertramp explains that Roger Hodgson, who left the group in 1983 to pursue a solo career, will not be joining them, despite 15 months of negotiations.

THE second cloned fighting bull to have been conceived in Spain was born dead  at the stud in Melgar de Yuso (Palencia).
Luckily, the first-ever cloned bull, named Got, who was born last month, is still doing well. “We knew that this situation [the stillborn bull] might happen, and sadly, it has,” laments Javier Azpeleta.
The investigation team, led by Vicente Torrent of the Valencian Veterinary Investigation Foundation (VIVE) was with the stillborn bull’s surrogate mother, Ángela, throughout her long labour.
Due to complications with the birth, the bull calf, who was going to be named Glass, had to be extracted from Ángela’s womb by the vet.
Glass’ name was chosen because the sperm was taken for his conception, and that of Got, came from a bull named Vasito, which translates into English as ‘small glass’.

BILBAO’S Guggenheim museum has the most expensive entrance fee out of all Spain’s major galleries, according to a study by the Eroski supermarket chain. To enter the futuristic building during periods of major temporary exhibitions, an individual ticket costs 13 euros. This compares with Madrid’s three main galleries, the Reina Sofía, which charges four euros, and is free on Sundays; the Prado, and the Thyssen-Bornemizsa, for which tickets cost eight euros. Valencia’s IVAM museum costs around two euros to enter.
Despite its hefty price tag, the Guggenheim remains one of Spain’s most-visited galleries, coming in sixth place after the Prado and Reina Sofía, which saw two million visitors last year, and the Museu Picasso, Museo Nacional d’Art de Catalunya and the Fundación Joan Miró, all in Catalunya, which attracted a million visitors in 2009.

Cuba plans to open underwater excursions to view six sunken vessels wrecked in 1898 off the island’s shores during the Spanish-American War, the state-run Cubatur tourism firm said last month. From October 1, visitors will be able to dive around the wrecks of five Spanish warships that were trapped in Santiago bay in southeastern Cuba and sunk by US warships in a running naval battle on July 3, 1898.
The five Spanish ships were the cruisers “Cristobal Colon,” “Almirante Oquendo,” and the “Vizcaya,” and the destroyers “Furor,” and “Pluton.”
The sixth sunken vessel was the US steamer “Merrimac,” which the Americans scuttled at the mouth of the bay to block the escape of the Spanish fleet.
The Spanish suffered 371 dead, 151 wounded and 1,670 prisoners, including Spanish admiral Pascual Cervera, who called the mismatch “a sacrifice as sterile as it was useless.” The US side suffered one dead and two wounded.
Tourism is Cuba’s main earner, ahead of medical services in other countries. The island receives 2.4 million tourists annually, who bring in some two billion dollars in revenue.

The number of foreign tourists visiting Spain dropped 13.3% in April because of problems caused by the cloud of volcanic ash, that closed European airspace for a week.
According to FRONTUR, this drop compared with the same month last year can be “largely attributed” to the cloud of ash coming from the volcano in Iceland, after tourist figures had seen a 3.2% rise in March, the largest increase for almost two years.
During April, however, the number of foreign tourists arriving in Spain dropped by 3.9 million, due mainly to the huge number of flights cancelled, most of which were on the routes to the UK and Germany, where most of Spain’s foreign tourists come from.
In contrast, the number of visitors to Spain from the USA, whose flights were not affected by the ash cloud, rose by 4.8% compared with April 2008.