Madrid - The Spanish parliament Thursday approved a controversial plan to encourage immigrants to return home amid rising unemployment.

The offer provides for jobless immigrants to be paid their unemployment benefit in advance, if they go back to their countries and agree not to return to Spain for three years.

More than 100,000 immigrants could take up the offer, but no more than 10,000 were expected to do so.

The plan was approved while unemployment continued rising for the sixth consecutive month, surpassing 2.6 million, according to new figures released by the government.

Seville, Spain - An earthquake of 3.8 degrees on the Richter scale rattled five southern Spanish provinces on Thursday, a spokesman for the National Seismic Network said.

Pamplona, Spain  - Spanish police detained four people overnight on charges of staging acts of street violence in support of the militant Basque separatist group ETA, officials said Wednesday.

Madrid - Spanish police have detained 121 people in their biggest swoop so far against child pornography on the internet, police said Wednesday.

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain  - The US judiciary is participating in the investigation on the August 20 air crash which killed 154 people in the Spanish capital Madrid, the US firm Ribbeck Law Chartered said Tuesday.

A judge in Chicago, where the plane maker Boeing has its headquarters, has set the date for the first hearing for the coming Monday, said Manuel von Ribbeck, a representative of the law firm.

Von Ribbeck spoke in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, where many of the victims were from.

Canary Islands - A boat carrying 229 African would-be immigrants landed on the Spanish Canary Island of Tenerife overnight, rescuers said Tuesday.

It was the largest number of Africans to arrive on a single vessel so far, officials told the national radio station RNE.

The migrants, who were all male, included 25 minors. They were in relatively good health, although six were treated for hypothermia.

A rescue plane spotted the 30-metre-long boat at about 100 kilometres off the Canary Islands, and a rescue vessel towed it to the port of Los Cristianos.