Motril Firefighters attended the scene in three fire trucks and extinguished the fire, which was no mean feat as they were hampered by high winds which were fanning the flames. Despite the prompt intervention of the fire crews, quite a lot of reeds and bushes went up in flames.

The flames could be seen from many miles away and made for an eerie spectacle when viewed from Salobreña. Thus far, what damage was caused by the fire has not been assessed.

Unfortunately, the figures show that the administration owes around 45 million euros for the said period, reported the Councillor for Finance, Antonio Laborda.

The same accounting team are now working on the period up to 2012, after finally closing the accounts for the 2007-2010 period. The delay in submitting these figures has meant that Almuñécar has had much needed income from State Taxes embargoed to the tune of 1,546,011 euros. Money that would have been very handy recently and the blame for the delay and amount owed has been firmly laid at the door of the previous administration.

Mr. Laborda has stated that the embargoed money has now been freed up and should be with the administration very soon and believes that the funds will increase the frequency of payments to suppliers who are still owed money by the Town Hall.

It is alleged that the driving school applied for 48,000 euros from the above bodies to school unemployed people and enable them to obtain a HGV licence.

The Ministry of Employment has already paid over 75 percent of the grant to the school, approximately 36,000 euros, to enable the school to start the courses, however it is alleged that the three drivers have received no instruction whatsoever to date.
After receiving the complaint from the three students, the Ministry has opened the investigation by demanding the academy hand over all documents relating to the money and any action taken so far on their part.

The Ministry has so far refused to call this a criminal fraud investigation, although it has pointed out that any breach of undertaking involves the obligation on the part of the Academy to repay the €36,000 euros thus far received.

The objects of these taxes are:
1)    Purchase of resale properties or rights. For example: real estate, second hand vehicles (boats, cars, motorbikes…). The sum to be taxed will be the highest between the one declared in the deeds/contract and the one given by the tax authorities. (The amount used in property transactions is calculated using coefficients of the cadastral value of the estate).
2)    Corporate deeds: company formation, company merger and acquisitions, changes in company capital and company liquidations.
3)    Public deeds and Legal acts, not included in points one and two: the taxable value will be the amount declared in the document.

Transfer Tax in Figures

1 – Real Estate
The transfer tax will be progressive using differential bands. For example the sale of a villa for one million euro, will be charged:
400,000€*8%+300,000€*9%+300,000€*10%=89,000€

For resale properties
Imposable base bracket 0.00€ to 400,000.00€ – Transfer tax rate 8%
Imposable base bracket 400,000.01€ to 700,000.00 – Transfer tax rate 9%
Imposable base bracket 700,000.01 and above – Transfer tax rate 10%
For resale of properties qualified as garages
Imposable base bracket 0.00€ to 30,000.00€ – Transfer tax rate 8%
Imposable base bracket 30,000.01€ to 50,000.00 – Transfer tax rate 9%
Imposable base bracket 50,000.01 and above – Transfer tax rat 10%

For New properties
For new properties there is no transfer tax but VAT of 4% for now.  It is still not clear if VAT will be increased during 2012. New properties are subject to VAT pay also stamp duty (1,20%).

2 – For Vehicles, rights and others.
As a general rule it will be 4%, of the highest value between the declared amount in the contract/deeds and the one given by the tax authorities.
The sum is 8% for: boats of more than 8 meters in length, vehicles of more than 15 fiscal horse power and art objects and antiques.

3 – Transfer of rights: guarantees, pensions, gages, loans and credits
The transfer tax will be set at 1%.

4 – Exceptions
•    For real estate intended for habitual residence with a value below 130,000€ and when the acquirer is under 35 years old: 3.5%.
•    For real estate intended for habitual residence with a value below 180,000€ and when the acquirer is disabled: 3.5%.
•    For real estate intended for resale by a professional or a company responding to the requisites of the General Plan in the real Estate sector (in Spanish “Plan General del Sector Inmobiliario”): 2%. The resale will have to take place within 5 years from the purchase.
Tax on Corporate transactions in figures
In corporate transactions, the tax rate is 1%

Stamp duty in figures
Stamp duty will increase or decrease according to different criteria:
•    1.2% for notary deeds intended for objects accountable in the Property Registry, the Commercial Registry, Industrial Property and Personal Property Registry, and properties subject to VAT.
•    0.3% for the purchase of a habitual residence with a value below 130,000€ and when the acquirer is less than 35 years old.
•    0.3% for a mortgage intended for the purchase of a habitual residence of a value below 130,000€ and when the same person is less than 35 years old.
•    0.1% in the purchase of the habitual residence with a value below 180,000€ and when the acquirer is disabled.
•    0.1% for a mortgage intended for the purchase of a habitual residence with a value below 180,000€ and when the acquirer is disabled.
•    2% in notarial deeds which formalise the transmission of properties where the exemption of VAT is waivered.
It is always recommendable to ask the advice of a Spanish lawyer who will be able to advise you and calculate all taxes prior to the sales-purchase.

Although it is only weeks since the scandal broke over our President’s bearings, it slowly starts to feel like years. Under every pebble lurks a new ‘scandal’ and I can’t help but think, that there are a lot of people out there who follow their own agendas even if it is only higher sales figures or ratings. Saying that the ongoing controversy partly is his fault, too; bad management – admitting news only after it breaks does not appear very trustworthy.

Old sins are catching up with him now – he attacked other politicians in similar circumstances with statements like, “It is a tragedy that Germany does not have an impartial President during this difficult time, who could raise his voice with authority.” Silly comments he made, like that he does not want to be the President of a country where loans from private persons and holidays at friends’ places are not allowed. As if he would not know that in his case private or cheap loans and free luxury holidays smell of corruption and abuse of (his previous) position!

Politicians like him are the reason why the people are fed up with politics and why this column exists – apart from a booming private economy we lack flagship politicians and model policies. Currently 31% of citizens think he is credible and just more than half feel he should step down. I feel it would damage Germany more having a second President resign in less than two years, but one should be more careful in future when choosing a candidate.

On a more cheerful note; we may not have an AAA president, but at least we kept our AAA rating. How quickly you can lose those with poor standards and moody economists, demonstrates the example of Austria. Perhaps only one person’s ambition is the reason, why Germany has been spared the shame of downgrading!

The soldier king Frederick the Great managed to establish 250 years ago a second empire on German soil, thus weakening the century long dominating Austrian dynasty under Maria Theresa to such a degree that it never managed to stand up to the Prussians again. Prussia eventually managed to dominate the whole of Germany with a central government in Berlin since 1871. This did not only shape history, but also character. Just imagine a pastry eating German in a coffee house with a charming accent, yodeling in lederhosen or a Mozart listening psychoanalyst instead of an efficient “Ugly German” with a harsh, barking voice!

But apart from those differences history would not have been very different, because the Austrians did not get on with France either and Hitler’s Anschluss also would have taken place, only the other way round. The Austrians probably are nowadays quite happy with the course of history and with their AA+ and Angela Merkel with her AAA. Whether she is happy with her president she won´t say.

A fire broke out on Calle Cruz de Piedra in Granada which had the firemen that tackled the blaze raising cynical eyebrows, because something smelled decidedly fishy, as well as of smoke. The firemen had been called out at five in the afternoon, but when they arrived at the scene of the fire they found the inhabitants of the house, 27-year-old P.L.C and 25-year-old N.R.S. still in the building.

The fire, which was on the second floor, was soon put out by the fire crew. But the fact that the inhabitants were inside instead of out on the street, which is what normally happens, together with the way the fire had occurred had them suspecting foul play straight away.

There doubts were strengthened when the two occupants claimed that they had not left the building because there was 6,000 euros in a wardrobe that they had wanted to rescue – the said wardrobe, by a strange coincidence was completely destroyed by the fire – which was about the only thing that was.

Fire investigators attached to the fire service inspected what was left of the wardrobe and there was no sign no signs of ash that burnt bank notes would produce. Further investigation turned up that the fire had not been caused by a short circuit, as the occupants claimed, but on the contrary the fire had three separate ignition points.

As far as the investigators were concerned the evidence was clear – there had been no bank notes in the wardrobe and the fire had been deliberate, so they handed over their report to the Policía Local as suspected arson.

The house was insured against fire so the owners stood to receive a large pay-out from the insurance company for the loss of property within, as well as damage to the actual building… hence the miraculous 6,000 euros in bank notes, allegedly.

(News: Granada, Andalucia)

A business that has its website appearing on top of SERP for keywords relevant to its activity will have an edge in attracting potential clients. Position in SERP is vital because customers will inevitably click the first few results rather than view those lower down the page.

Traffic to websites coming from SERP is highly qualified because web users are often looking for commercial information in order to satisfy an immediate or future need and websites found are relevant to these searches. Thus Search Engines are a great source of potential clients.

The base of SEM is to find the keywords that clients will use in finding the service you are selling. This activity called Keyword Research can be done systematically, using tools from the search engines themselves.

A SERP will deliver results like web pages, news, videos, images and maps. These will fall into two categories: Sponsored and Organic results.
With sponsored results, you will pay a fee to the search engine in order to appear in the SERP with an ad, for specific keywords. You will be charged only when the searcher clicks the advert (thus the name ‘pay per click’ or PPC). An automatic real time auction will determine the exact fee. In Google, for example, sponsored results appear on the right side and on the top outlined by a beige background.

Organic results are the non-sponsored pages found by the search engines according to their relevance criteria. The algorithms that search engines are using are rather complex and continuously changing in order to improve the quality of the results.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the practice to find ways to get a website on top of Organic results for chosen keywords. SEO can be roughly divided in two activities
On-Site SEO: where we tailor the structure and the content of the site.
Off-Site SEO: where we create links and mentions from other websites in order to gather authority in the context of the keywords we choose. This is the most important and long part.

SEO and PPC are not easy and you need competent consultants to manage them. The advantage of SEO over PPC is that SEO overall cost is low. The disadvantage is that it takes time to get results (often several months) while PPC will give immediate returns.
When you are launching a new website, it makes sense to enrol into a PPC program (for example Ad-Words with Google), this way you will get traffic from day one. Later on, when the SEO efforts start to give results it will be possible to lower or cancel the spending in PPC.

It is important to constantly measure the traffic to the site, in order to have a clear understanding of what is happening, how users are interacting with the website and are generating return. The practice of doing this research is called Web Analytics and it will be the subject of the next article.

The first one looked at more than 1.9 million participants in 25 studies which studied the benefits of dietary fiber, where single studies still produce conflicting results. Taking all the evidence together, the authors came to the conclusion that fiber from fruits, vegetables and legumes are not protective against bowel cancer, but that total fiber intake and fiber from cereals and whole grain reduce the chance of contracting bowel cancer significantly. Unfortunately it could not be established, whether smoking, lack of exercise, obesity and a diet high in fat, red meat or alcohol had an impact on the outcome.

A second meta-analysis with 12.000 participants only showed that long term treatment with low dose Aspirin showed a significantly lower probability of contracting bowel cancer, after it already had been shown that higher dose Aspirin lowered the cancer risk, but increased the risk of serious bleeding.
By presenting this news, I don´t necessarily present good news. In our pursuit of achieving longer and healthier lives, we have to acknowledge the fact that bowel cancer is common. Dietary changes, Aspirin and other life style changes alone cannot be relied upon to prevent the third most common cancer of the developed world; approximately 1 in 17 people will be affected by it during their lifetime.

Dietary and lifestyle changes certainly do improve the overall health of any individual, but everybody from the age of 50 onwards should think of additional strategies to prevent bowel cancer. This is particularly true, because it usually develops slowly. Most cancers develop from polyps and it is thought that it takes up to 10 years to change into a cancerous lesion. Knowing the natural history of its development and being a common disease makes it an ideal candidate for screening. The problem is most polyps never ever will develop into cancer, but there is no way foretelling which one will.

Currently there are 3 (4) accepted methods of screening. Yearly stool tests for occult blood (yearly means yearly) is the least invasive method, but also the least reliable one, too.  A combination of 3yearly stool tests and 5yearly sigmoidoscopy would be an alternative.  A sigmoidoscopy means a tube is being passed up the last 50cm of the large bowel where three quarters of the polyps occur. 10-yearly colonoscopies are regarded the gold standard, where the entire large bowel is looked at through a tube.

Unfortunately the latter two tests can cause serious complications in up to 2.5% of procedures; bleeding, perforation of the bowel, infection and exacerbation of diverticulitis. But with such procedures most polyps can be removed at the time of screening.  A fourth, new screening procedure also seems to be very promising: virtual colonoscopy. This is a special computer tomographic investigation of the bowel, producing hundreds of images. The downside is a lack of experienced radiologists, the amount of radiation and last not least coincidental findings on the images in the rest of the abdomen, frequently leading to unnecessary further investigations.

As more attributes and applications become available, more people are discovering that phones can be wallets, email centres, photo albums, contact files, and music library, meaning they are loaded with unprotected personal information. People don’t realize that the same security concerns they have for their PCs they should extend to their smartphones, which are more vulnerable since they’re strictly wireless.

All smartphones have security vulnerabilities but for the moment most mobile malware is aimed at Android devices mainly because it is an open platform, thus making is easier for the bad guys to disperse their malicious software. One reason is that Apple does not license its software to other phone manufacturers but Google freely gives Android to phone makers, so these are growing faster and price points are lower.

Regardless of the operating platform, hackers are capable of installing Trojans that intercept financial transactions and use your personal information for their gain; some malware can send text messages to premium SMS services unbeknownst to you until you get your monthly bill; spyware can harvest information about your personal activities and record phone conversations; ‘Quick Response’ codes (those new black and white squares appearing in ads) can link to malicious text messages or websites.

Even though this is an early warning stage for smartphone users, there are some basic things you can do now to protect yourself:

1. Have a very personal password that would be tough for strangers to decipher.

2. Change your password frequently.

3. Ensure you are running the latest version of your phone’s operating system and apps you may have.

4. Use encryption whenever possible.

5. Think before you download apps by checking reviews. If you stay with major apps and app stores like Amazon or iTunes, your chances of getting malware are low but of course still possible. Bad apps can look like legitimate ones.

6. Obviously follow the same safe practices on your smartphone that you have for your PC or tablet.

It took almost 15 years for serious hacking problems to surface in the PC world but it has only taken 2 years on the mobile platform. The bad guys are at their experimental stages of development so don’t panic yet – unless you’re a celebrity you aren’t likely to be a target.

Just bear in mind that as mobile devices like the tablet and smartphone become more prolific (in 2011 combined tablet and smartphone purchases eclipsed those of desktops and laptops), remember that it only takes a couple of seconds to steal personal information. It’s OK to be smartly mobile – with a bit of protection.

The work involves demolishing the central reservation running between the two lanes and asphalting this space over, leaving one very wide, multiple lane road surface. This will allow space for a lane for heavy vehicles coming out of and into the fire-station, for example.

Furthermore, the 300 metres of bicycle lane will be widened, thus avoiding the dangerous junction where the port road and Avenida Julio Moreno join. At this junction there will be a new roundabout built. At a later date, the bicycle lane will link with the Paseo Marítimo.

Finally, the Motril-Playa bus will have a layby installed, as at present it stops to pick up passengers on the roundabout, which is dangerous.

All this is set to commence in about two weeks

(News: Motril, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)