A U.S. naval ship was to stop in Spain Thursday while it waits for Syrian authorities to hand over chemical weapons so it can destroy them at sea, diplomats said.

The MV Cape Ray container ship "will be anchored from today at the Rota naval base in a routine visit" for rest and supplies on Spain's south coast, the U.S. embassy said in a statement.

Police found the body of a migrant on a beach in Ceuta Wednesday, bringing to 11 the number of people who drowned trying to swim to the Spanish exclave from Morocco, an official said.

Officers discovered the body of a man in his twenties at Ceuta's Tarajal beach, a spokesman for the Spanish government's delegation in the territory said.

Spanish police have arrested a Serbian member of a gang of robbers known as the Pink Panthers, wanted for a multi-million-euro jewelry heist, authorities said on Wednesday.

The man, Borko Ilincic, 33, has been sentenced to life in jail in the United Arab Emirates for a ram-raid in a Dubai shopping mall in 2007, "one of the most famous robberies in history", Spanish police said in a statement.

The head of Italy's Northern League on Wednesday said he supported the autonomy bids of Catalonia from Spain and Scotland from Britain, and hoped that the Venice region "will be next on the list".

Matteo Salvini said two other regions of northern Italy -- Lombardy and Piedmont -- could also follow suit, adding that it was time to reduce the powers of the European Union and return to "national and regional sovereignty".

A controversial plan to ban women in Spain from freely opting for abortions faced a hurdle on Tuesday when lawmakers were to vote on a motion to scrap the reform.

The plan has not only outraged pro-choice groups but has sparked division even within the conservative ruling party.

Spain's parliament took the first steps Tuesday to reduce the power of the country's courts to probe human rights cases around the world, a practice that has irked some foreign capitals.

Spain's conservative Popular Party tabled a draft law last month that will limit the use of "universal jurisdiction", which allows judges to try certain cases of human rights abuses committed in other countries.

A Spanish judge on Monday sought international arrest warrants for former Chinese President Jiang Zemin and four other top Chinese officials as part of a probe into alleged genocide in Tibet.

High Court Judge Ismael Moreno ordered Interpol to issue the arrest warrants for the five for genocide, torture and crimes against humanity as part of a case brought against them in Spain by human rights groups.

Human Rights Watch on Monday called on Morocco and Spain to end the abusive treatment of sub-Saharan immigrants, after nine migrants drowned trying to reach the Spanish territory of Ceuta.

Morocco has struggled to cope with a rising tide of sub-Saharan Africans heading to its northern shores in their desperate quest to cross the Mediterranean, and its security forces have increasingly come under fire for beating, arbitrarily detaining and deporting illegal immigrants.

Spanish police said Sunday they were on the hunt for five foreign fugitives who are thought to be hiding in Spain, including two British men and a Colombian woman wanted for murder.

Police asked the public to be on the lookout for Kevin Thomas Parle, 33, who is wanted in Britain for the murder of a young mother who was shot dead when three men burst into her home in the northwestern city Liverpool in 2005.

Thousands of women marched in the streets of Madrid on Saturday to protest against the Spanish government's plan to restrict access to abortion.

They yelled "Freedom of abortion!" and waved signs such as "MPs and rosaries, out of my ovaries", targeting the Catholic Church as the supposed driver of the reform.