Collapse of the pound Holiday makers will still pay around £85 more per €1,000 they spend this year, compared to April 2008

Collapse of the pound against the Dollar, and to a lesser extent the Euro, mean British holiday makers will find their break in the Med, or their Disneyland trip, much more expensive this year.
Research from moneysupermarket.com reveals it will cost Brits nearly £300 more for every $1,500 spent in the States now, compared to this time last year.For European travellers the outlook isn't much better, despite the pound's recent rally against the Euro holiday makers will still pay around £85 more per €1,000 they spend this year, compared to April 2008.Peter Harrison, travel money expert at moneysupermarket.com, said: "There can be no doubt the weakening pound will have a big impact on where people can afford to go on their summer holidays this year. Trips to Europe and America are going to be much more expensive for Brits, so making sure you organise your foreign currency in good time will be more important than ever."Using a credit or debit card which doesn't levy charges for use abroad, such as the Post Office credit card, is often the best way to keep foreign currency costs down."Another option is to get a prepaid card and load it with a set amount of holiday money. The rates on these cards are amongst the best in the market for travel money, and they can help people stick to budgets."

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Action star Dolph Lundgren's wife was left traumatized after robbers tied her up in their home

Action star Dolph Lundgren's wife was left traumatized after robbers tied her up in their home. The masked burglars abandoned the robbery after discovering the house belonged to the "Rocky IV" star.Three armed thieves broke into his Costa del Sol villa and tied his wife Anette, who was alone in the estate. They were terrorizing her into giving them cash, jewelries, and other valuables when they recognized the actor's picture in a family portrait.They quickly abandoned the raid.The 6ft. 5 in. karate black belter, who gained fame playing Russian boxer Ian Drago opposite Sylvester Stallone's Rocky in the film's fourth installment, consoled his wife when she phoned him in tears.A source told the Daily Mail, "Things might have turned out very differently if Dolph had been in.""The criminals fled as soon as they realized the owner of the house they had raided was someone they wouldn't want to come up against in a fight.""They left Anette pretty traumatized. She's Dolph's angel and anyone who messes with her is messing with him."The authorities are currently hunting the three attackers.The source said, "Police have got very few leads. All three burglars wore balaclavas and they've no real description to go on.""They're look at CCTV footage to see if they can advance the inquiry. Dolph's away on business a lot and he's increased security to try to avoid a repeat."Lundgren is currently filming Stallone's "The Expendables" with an all-star cast.

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WARNING:Portuguese man-of-war seen close to the beaches of the Costa del Sol, in southern Spain, and off the coast of Murcia, in the south-east.

Portuguese man-of-war , with their lethal stings, made an unusual incursion into waters normally considered too warm for them.The jellyfish have been seen close to the beaches of the Costa del Sol, in southern Spain, and off the coast of Murcia, in the south-east.
The Portuguese man-of-war, a jelly-like creature, gives a burning sting that is far more painful than that of a jellyfish.In extreme cases, the sting can cause heart attacks in victims who are allergic to it.Westerly winds have blown the Portuguese men-of-war into the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar and along the length of Spain's southern coast, scientists said."They go wherever they are driven by the wind," Xavier Pastor, of the Oceana NGO organisation, explained."They have little sails and that means that, if the wind is blowing in towards the coast, they end up on the coast."Pastor said groups of the creatures had been seen off Malaga and the Costa del Sol a few weeks ago.The latest sightings, around Murcia, were made by Spain's state-run Oceanography Centre of Murcia.The tentacles of a man-of-war can be 30 metres long and are strung with tiny stinging capsules that survive even when it has been washed up onto shore or if the tentacles have broken off.
The capsules have small triggers that release the stings when they are touched and hang below a pink-tinged blue bubble that acts as the sail.Pastor said there did not appear to be enough of the creatures to form a permanent colony in the Mediterranean but warned of dramatic consequences if they did."It would be a big problem for the tourist industry and for swimmers," he said. "This is far worse than having jellyfish."

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Arrested a taxi driver who is accused of raping a British tourist in the Marbella hotel

On Tuesday the woman, who is around 50 years old, had lunch in a restaurant in Marbella and then asked for a taxi to collect her and take her to her hotel.The taxi driver took the woman to her hotel and then apparently went with her up to her room. Sources close to the case say that the hotel receptionist saw the driver go up to the fourth floor and then come down some minutes later. It was during this period of time that the rape allegedly took place.
Once the driver had gone, the woman told a friend what had happened. The friend took the woman to the Costa del Sol Hospital for an examination. The results of the examination said that there were signs of sexual aggression involving penetration - which the woman says was against her will - and light bruising on her arms which could have been caused by being held down.
The hospital informed the National Police who arrested the taxi driver at a bus stop within a matter of hours. The driver was later released with charges by the courts.National Police officers have arrested a taxi driver who is accused of raping a foreign tourist in the Marbella hotel she was staying in.According to the sources close to the case, the victim originally intended to go home without bringing charges but she decided to do so and confirmed her version of events to the police.

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Hicham Mandari lying face down in a garage between Mijas and Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol with a bullet in his head

Spanish police first came upon the body of Hicham Mandari lying face down in a garage between Mijas and Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol with a bullet in his head, they thought him just one more victim of a revenge attack among gangsters, typical of the region. Or they said they did. But the death of the young Moroccan has involved the secret services of four countries and turned a spotlight upon the secretive, sometimes menacing world of the Moroccan royal court.Mandari's body was found around midnight on 4 August, but it was not until 11 days later that police confirmed the death and ventured that the assassination by a single 9mm bullet shot upwards from the back of the neck bore the hallmark of a professional contract killing. The crime was "the work of common delinquents, very probably French or Moroccan acting under contract", police said. But under contract from whom? "We are becoming aware that the victim had created a long list of enemies," a source said with more than the usual circumlocutory caution in the days that followed.Witnesses said the victim, aged 33, was hunted down to the spot where he died by a person with Arab features. Some testified to having seen Mandari in the streets accompanied by three "Arabs or Maghrebis". Others swore they saw two men flee the scene to jump into a van driven by a third man."The only thing we know for sure," confided a baffled police source, "is that Mandari was killed the day he arrived in Spain. Effectively, he headed directly to his rendezvous with death."
He had already survived three assassination attempts - the last in Paris in April 2003 sent him to hospital with three bullets in his body. He came out stuffed with cortisone and with a serious injury to his right leg. More than a month after his death, no further leads have appeared, and the circumstances of his death have become more mysterious.Investigations have partially uncovered a tale of alleged currency forgery, blackmail and corruption surrounding the court of the late Moroccan king, Hassan II, where Mandari was once a trusted courtier.The tables turned brutally against the ertswhile golden boy of the Moroccan jetset, who went so far as to declare himself King Hassan II's lovechild, and whom the authorities in Rabat came to dismiss as a dangerous delinquent and fantasist. From favourite son to hunted pariah, Mandari went on the run while threatening to spill the beans on palace dramas involving concubines and secret treachery that would shatter the modern image today's Moroccan royals have been trying to project.

While Spanish authorities kept quiet over the identity of the body in the carpark, French secret services tracked down a Frenchman of Algerian origin who had provided Mandari with a false Italian driving licence in the name of Ben Al Asan Ala Laoui Icam. The man apparently saw Mandari just before he took the flight to Malaga on the afternoon of 4 August. "I'm going to Spain for a couple of days perhaps to Italy," Mandari told him over a coffee, and in an unprecedented gesture, gave his accomplice his address book and a mobile phone. Moroccan, Bahreini and Saudi security services have since become involved.Spain later complained that the French dragged their feet for five days before revealing the man's real name. Hopes of getting a lead from his notebook were dashed. "He did everything in code," police said.One story for the murder was that Madari had made a romantic tryst with a young woman with whom he was infatuated and on whom he lavished money. She is said to be a senior member of the Moroccan hierarchy who was on holiday in Marbella just down the coast. Another hypothesis, suggested by al-Jazeera television, was that Mandari was heading for the Spanish costa in pursuit of a business opportunity: he planned to acquire a local radio station to beam broadcasts in favour of Moroccan democracy to his compatriots across the Mediterranean.The Spanish newspaper El Pais indicated that Mandari had given the Moroccan authorities ample grounds to wish him out of the way: "It is logical to give priority to a suspected act of revenge of Moroccan origin, since Mandari constantly made threats against Rabat." But a French security source, quoted by the Paris-based Libération, was more circumspect: "Since we're dealing with an individual implicated in so many shady activities and who had so many enemies, it's necessary to look in all possible directions."

The scene was the perfect choice for such a crime. The Costa del Sol, hangout for rich gangsters from everywhere, has become so used anonymous contract killings that it became dubbed the Costa del Plomo - the Coast of Lead. Here, far from prying eyes, whether they be the forces of law and order or rival gangs, criminal networks mastermind lucrative drug, money-laundering and revenge deals.
Spain's sun-bleached, palm tree-lined, gangland paradise is not so far from the environment in which Mandari grew up and from which he was expelled when he turned against his powerful protectors in 1999.
"A future chronicler of Morocco's ruling dynasty should mark the name of Hicham Mandari as that of the man who pierced the thick walls of the royal palace and revealed the secrets of a monarchy of divine right made mortal by the human, too human, frailties of the reigning family," wrote Le Monde.
Brought up by his mother, Sheherazade Mandari, née Fechtali, the young Hicham grew up in the 1980s under the protection of Hafid Benhachem, a future national security director, whose two sons became his boyhood friends. Never short of money, the trio used to tear round Rabat on a moped and frequent the capital's smartest disco, the Jefferson.Hicham then eloped with Hayat Filali, the daughter of a senior royal official. The couple were caught, but instead of being punished, received the blessing of the king to marry. This happy outcome was arranged by Hayat's aunt, Farida Cherkaoui, the king's favourite concubine.She further arranged that Mandari join the court as a member of the security department, which was headed by Mohamed Mediouri, who happened to be in love with King Hassan's wife, who was known as "mother of the princes". (When the king died in 1999, Mediouri married her and they still live together in Versailles and Marakech.)Mandari lost no time in winning over the women of the harem by showing them with gifts. He brought telephones and computers for the king's concubines, who were kept in seclusion and attended by white-robed servants.By the late 1990s, King Hassan, though weakened with age, still terrorised his subjects through the arbitrary use of arrest, torture or secret prisons. But within the ochre-washed palace walls, he could not control the avarice among his own servants, who - fearful of their status after the king's death - plundered silverware, paintings, carpets and furniture.Mandari, through his accomplices in the harem and other courtiers, gained access to the palace strongbox, where he helped himself to several of the king's blank cheques. These he used to strip the king's accounts of several hundred million dollars, plus crown jewels and secret documents, including an inventory of royal possessions abroad - or at least that is what he intimated later, in a brazen attempt to blackmail the royal house.He was confronted one day by a court official who had been asked by a Luxembourg bank to authenticate the royal signature on a huge cheque. Warned by court spies of the king's wrath, Mandari fled abroad with his wife and their baby daughter."His majesty entrusted me with an inquiry into the thefts," King Hassan's Interior Minister, Driss Basri, told Le Monde. "I think Mandari had in his possession three or four state secrets." Mr Basri made this confession after falling out with Hassan's son Mohammed and fleeing to exile in Paris.Mandari left Paris for Brussels, Frankfurt and finally reached the US, where he launched accusations against the Moroccan crown. On 6 June, 1999, he took out an advertisement in The Washington Post addressed to the king, in which he declared he was "a victim of lies" and demanded "a royal pardon". He went on: "You must understand, Majesty, that for my defence and those close to me, I have prepared dossiers containing information ... damaging to your image throughout the world." A fortnight later, he narrowly escaped being kidnapped in Florida.King Hassan died in July 1999 and was succeeded by Mohammed, who sought to cover up the scandal and extradite the former courtier to Morocco. Mandari was arrested in the US in connection with the circulation of falsified Bahrein dinars to the value of €350m (£238m), fabricated in Argentina, and spent three years fighting his extradition. He was freed in 2002 and extradited to France, in a brokered deal under which France promised not to hand him over to Morocco.In 2003, his wife left him and returned home, whereupon Mandari prounced himself Hassan's love child by Farida Cherkaoui and hence brother to the reigning monarch. Ms Cherkaoui has subsequently gone to ground. At this point he was arrested on charges of blackmailing the president of the Morocco's Foreign Trade Bank, Othman Benjelloun, one of the richest men in Morocco. Freed on bail in January 2004, Mandari was now fearing for his life.Mandari planned to call a press conference in the glitzy pleasure resort of Marbella on the eve of his death, to lay bare "the blackest pages of corruption of the kingdom now ruled by Hassan's son Mohammed ... and call upon democratic forces to fight for a state of law", according to Madrid's La Razon newspaper.
Mandari's opposition movement, the National Council of Free Moroccans, was dismissed by the Moroccan weekly Le Journal in July, just days before his death, as "a still-born fraud composed of two fanatics". Moroccan authorities were none the less alarmed when he asked the well-known left-wing Spanish lawyer Cristine Almeida to help him obtain a resident's permit.Mandari told Le Journal in his last interview that he "planned a press campaign particularly damaging to Morocco". He also hinted at scandal in France: "I know all the French ministers," he said. "I know Chirac very well. I called [the Interior Minister] Dominique de Villepin but he has been told not to talk to me. I know lots of things about other politicians too."The dissident Moroccan writer Ali Lmrabet described Mandari as "the man who knew too much". He "gave the impression of knowing many people in the palace", and would show to anyone interested a photocopy of a Moroccan diplomatic passport in which he is described as "special adviser to Hassan II", Mr Lmrabet wrote in the Spanish El Mundo daily.Mandari was like an orchid, a friend recalled: "Beautiful to look at, but rooted in mud." Whoever crushed this exotic bloom, few in the Moroccan royal court will mourn his passing.

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Police raids 60 prostitutes from Carambola, Canela, Manhatten and H2 roadside clubs

Eight club owners seized along with 60 prostitutes from the Carambola, Canela, Manhatten and H2 roadside clubs, all in El Ejido and Roquetas de Mar.largest network of traffickers of Russian women for means of sexual exploitation ever to have been investigated in Spain has brought the Spanish National Police to Almeria Province where the greatest number of arrests has been made.Operation ‘Zarpa’, which is in its third stage of development, has led to the arrests of 24 men and women in Almeria who have been controlling the illegal network. The Ministry for the Interior says a total of 400 women have now been arrested for being in Spain illegally as part of the operation, who were placed in flats which were tightly controlled and supervised. Eighteen properties in Almeria Province were raided by police, most of which were in El Ejido and the rest in Roquetas del Mar and Berja. The women were packed into small apartments, and police found as many as 14 beds in each flat.
More than two million euros have been sent back to Russia since 2006, and investigations have shown that the operation was controlled by married couples of both Spanish and Russian nationality. They will now face many years in prison.These exploiters lure girls to Spain with promises of a better life but once they arrive, their passports are taken away and they are subjected to a life of “sexual slavery”.

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