Madrid - People may marry for love, but divorce is about money, as Spain's deepening economic crisis is making clear.

This year's slowdown and the credit crunch affecting banks are cutting divorce rates, Madrid divorce lawyer Antonio Prada says, estimating the decrease at 30 per cent so far.

"It has become extremely difficult for couples wanting to divorce to sell their home at a reasonable price, and the crisis is also making it harder to maintain two separate households," Prada told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Lima

Madrid, Barcelona - Spanish police Thursday detained 18 people on charges of links with Islamist terrorism, including the 2004 Madrid train bombings, Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said.

Eight of the detainees were Moroccans, Rubalcaba said. Six are being held in the Barcelona area, one in Madrid and one in Algeciras on the southern coast.

Ten other people were also being questioned, Rubalcaba said, adding that some of them might be released.

Madrid - A judge at Spain's National Court on Thursday authorized the opening of a mass grave dating from the 1936-39 civil war and believed to contain the bones of poet Federico Garcia Lorca.

Judge Baltasar Garzon accepted a request from 22 associations to investigate disappearances of leftist republican victims of the war, which was won by right-wing General Francisco Franco, and victims of Franco's subsequent dictatorship that lasted until 1975.

Madrid - An investigating judge has accused two aviation technicians and a maintenance chief of manslaughter in the Madrid air crash that killed 154 people on August 20, judicial sources said Thursday.

Judge Juan Javier Perez will question the three on suspicion of manslaughter on 154 counts and involuntarily causing injuries on 18 counts.

The judge also ordered the creation of a second investigating commission in addition to a civil aviation commission that has released a preliminary report on the accident.

The Spanair MD-82 jet that crashed immediately after take-off did not have its wing flaps and slats deployed, and the plane's warning system failed to inform the pilots of the problem, according to the preliminary report.

Barcelona - Spanish police detained at least four suspected Islamist extremists Thursday in the north-eastern region of Catalonia, police said.