Madrid - Spain's Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted prison sentences handed to 14 among a total of 20 suspected Islamists who were convicted in February of membership or collaboration with cells planning attacks in Spain.

The 14 acquitted on appeal were serving sentences ranging from seven to 11 years in prison for belonging to a terrorist organization.

Madrid - A US judge has ordered aircraft maker Boeing to hand over all available technical information on the MD-82 jetliner that crashed in Madrid on August 20, killing 154 people, Spanish press reports said Tuesday.

A US law firm has filed a complaint against Boeing and its subsidiary McDonnell Douglas in the name of 18 families that lost members in the accident.

The judicial proceedings started Monday in the US state of Illinois, where Boeing has its headquarters.

Ribbeck Law Chartered was initially seeking technical information on the plane in order to decide how to proceed, lawyers representing the law firm were quoted as saying.

Madrid - A bomb attack by suspected Basque terrorists in Spain has caused serious damage, the Basque Interior Ministry reported Saturday.

The attack took place overnight when a 5-kilo bomb hidden in a rucksack exploded in front of a courthouse in the town of Tolosa to the south of San Sebastian in the Basque region of northern Spain.

No people were injured in the blast which blew a 3-metre hole out of the facade of the courthouse and shattered all the windows in the five-storey building.

Madrid - The Spanish government approved four decrees on Friday aimed at recognizing the suffering of the leftist victims of the 1936-39 civil war and the subsequent dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.

Those jailed, tortured or forced to work in labour camps, their relatives, or relatives of executed people will be able to apply for a document which gives them no monetary rights, but constitutes the first official recognition of their status as victims.

Madrid - Spain and Italy "clarified" their spat over Madrid's immigration policies on Friday, after Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni described Spain's system as "permissive," Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega has said.

Maroni had claimed in an interview with Italian media on Thursday that there were now less than 120,000 Roma Gypsies in Italy, because many of them had gone to "the more permissive Spain of (Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez) Zapatero."

Madrid - The thousands of African would-be immigrants arriving on Spain's Canary Islands include increasing numbers of children, the daily El Pais reported Friday.

The number of unaccompanied minors arriving annually has risen from a few hundred in 2000 to more than 700 by 2007. Children as young as 9 years old have been amongst the arrivals.

Reception centres on the islands now house 1,200 minors, more than twice as many as facilities there are designed to care for. Local authorities have called on the government to take most of the children to the Spanish mainland.