Madrid - Spanish police could be about to solve one of the country's oldest terrorism-related criminal mysteries, press reports said Wednesday.

Police have now spent four months in the south-eastern French countryside looking for the remains of Publio Cordon, a businessman who is believed to have been kidnapped by the far-left group Grapo (Anti-Fascist Resistance Groups of the First of October) in 1995.

Cordon's family paid the abductors a ransom worth 2.4 million euros (3 million dollars). Grapo claimed to have released the entrepreneur in Barcelona, but he never returned home.

Madrid - Penelope Cruz, 34, the first Spanish actress to win an Oscar, has been named the "favourite daughter" - a title equivalent to honorary citizen - of her birth town Alcobendas, media reported Wednesday.

Cruz won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her role in US director Woody Allen's movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which was shot in Spain.

"I grew up in a place called Alcobendas, where this was not a very realistic dream," Cruz said Monday's award ceremony in Los Angeles.

The town of 107,000 residents north of Madrid was delighted that Cruz had mentioned it, mayor Ignacio Garcia de Vinuesa said, explaining that thousands of people had now looked up Alcobendas on the internet.

Dubai  - Linares - one of the most-renowned tournaments in world chess - is surrendering to the power of an Arab businessman, who is set to bring the best players to the desert in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from 2010.

"We pay the expenses of players and the prizes, I think around 2 million euros (some 2.5 million dollars)," Sulaiman Al Fahim told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in an interview in Dubai.

"From 2010, the tournament will be held in Spain and the UAE," he said.

Madrid - Spain's government budget showed a deficit of 3.8 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2008, the finance ministry said Tuesday, as one of Europe's most troubled major economies showed further signs of weakening.

The deficit compares with a with a surplus of 2.2 per cent in 2007, the ministry said.

The government attributed the change to fiscal stimulus packages designed to buttress the economy, which has gone into a recession after being hit by the meltdown of the key construction sector.

Madrid - The glaciers on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees mountains straddling Spain and France are set to melt completely by mid-century, the daily El Pais on Tuesday quoted an Environment Ministry report as saying.

The glaciers covering parts of the Spanish Pyrenees have lost 88 per cent of their surface since 1894, down to 206 hectares in 2008, according to the report.

The glaciers are now retreating faster than before, losing 25 per cent of their surface between 2002 and 2008.

Recent harsh winters have stabilized the glaciers temporarily, but have not allowed them to grow.

Experts attribute the retreat of the glaciers to rising temperatures and reduced rainfall linked to global warming.

Madrid - Spanish Justice Minister Mariano Fernandez Bermejo announced Monday that he is to step down.

Bermejo had come under increasing criticism by the conservative opposition over going on a hunting expedition with a judge who is investigating a corruption scandal among the conservatives.

It also turned out that Bermejo faced a fine of up to 4,000 euros (6,700 dollars) for not having a licence to hunt in the southern Andalusia region, where the expedition occurred.