A Marine Rescue craft and helicopter were dispatched to the scene by the Maritime Rescue centre in Las Palmas.

However, they were beaten to the punch by a local fishing boat, the Mary Gema I, which was in the vicinity at the time and rescued the two sailors, caring for them until they could be transferred to the Marine Rescue craft, the Salvamar Mizar, which returned the to the safety of dry land in Fuerteventura.

The latest figures, prepared by AutoScout24, left the Canary Islands with the highest used car prices in Spain, followed by Madrid where prices rose to an average 13,674 euros.

However, the Canary Islands 7.4 increase was eclipsed by Cantabria where prices increased by an average of 9.3 per cent.

Meanwhile, Extremadura, (9,627) and Castilla-La Mancha, (11,568) enjoyed the lowest average used car prices.

On the upside, nationally, the average price of used vehicles in Spain started the year with a further decrease in prices of 1.4 per cent, (the smallest decrease in recent years), to stand at 12,660 euros.

The two men, aged 30 and 35 and from the Canary Islands, were arrested at the airport’s arrivals lounge, where officers discovered a quantity of hashish in their hand luggage.

Later both men were taken to a nearby hospital where they were found to have also ingested several sealed packages of the same substance, which was recovered as evidence under medical supervision.

In all, the men were found to be carrying more than 1.2kg of hashish and were remanded in custody pending a court appearance.

Scientists said the tremors were centred to the west of the island in the area of El Golfo and El Julan and ranged between 0.6 and 2.3 on the Richter scale.

Two of the tremors were large enough to be felt by the local population, one measuring 2.0 and a second measuring 2.3 on the Richter scale.

Despite this, scientists report that the latest survey of the underwater volcanic fissures shows activity has decreased since last week when the opening of a second vent saw activity increase.

According to the Ministry of Health, all the victims were either patients or staff at a centre for the mentally handicapped in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

Experts believe the outbreak was caused by a bug called ‘Shigella flexneri’, a bacterium which lives in the human intestine and causes dysentery of varying severity depending on the strain.

Experts say that under normal circumstances the infection is mild and has no serious or lasting effect on people in good health but can lead to complications in patients with previously existing illnesses and those with a depressed immune system.

Experts from the Department of Public Health of the Canary Islands has made an inspection of the centre and took samples of both water and food, as well as stool samples from both patients and staff.

However the source of the outbreak remains, as yet, unconfirmed.

Emergency services were alerted after the victim went into the sea at Buenavista and a rescue attempt was initiated, which included helicopters and rescue craft.

The victim’s body was discovered some time later, recovered by helicopter and brought to land at a makeshift heliport near the beach.

However, despite the best efforts of medical staff on hand, the man was declared dead at the scene.

Police say the robbers got in to the shop, in San Isidro in the south of the island, by knocking a hole into the side of the shop from an adjoining building, still under construction.

At a court appearance over the weekend the judge said that while only one of the group actually carried out the attack, the four young men, aged between 19 and 23, would be remanded without bail.

The fifth accused, a woman who helped the gang escape the scene in her car, was released on bail.

Meanwhile, the victim, who suffered multiple stab wounds in the attack, remains in a serious condition in a Las Palmas hospital following emergency surgery.

In Santa Cruz de Tenerife around 8,000 people took part in the march, according to union leaders, although police estimated the numbers at around 2,500.

Secretary General of the UGT Union in the Canary Islands, Gustavo Santana, said this Sunday’s march is only the first of a series of protests against government reform of labour laws which, objectors say, will make it easier and less costly for employers to hire and fire workers.

Santana described the new labour reforms as ‘an unprecedented social decline’ urging the government to rethink the proposals.

That is the startling finding of the latest report from the Canary Islands’ Health Service, which studied 19,000 patients and found treatments, which showed no beneficial effects, were costing the NHS 75 million euros a year.

Francisco Kovacs, author of the study and director of the Spanish Network of Researchers on back problems (REIDE), said the data should push health authorities to implement measures, which ensure logic is the deciding factor in what treatments are funded by the public health service.

The research was carried out on the Canary Islands’ Health Service because it was the first in Spain to implement a computerised management system for the treatment of patients with back pain.

As a result, treatments were authorised outside the NHS, many of which were found to be of no lasting benefit to the patient and worse, in some cases to be totally useless.

In all, the report found that between 2004 and 2007 more than five million euros was spent on private treatment for 8,038 patients, of which only around 40 per cent saw any lasting benefit.

The report showed that almost 60 per cent of the funding went on non-effective treatment, while almost 28 per cent was shown to have been spent on treatment previously proven to be useless.