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Legal move to halt Novo Banco sale

besThe parliamentary committee of inquiry into the management of Banco Espírito Santo and the Espírito Santo Group gets back to work on Tuesday after a two week break.

Since the committee convened on 17 November there have been 115 hours of hearings involving 20 different people.

Portugal to enjoy good olive crop while others fail

olivesThe olive crop in much of southern Europe has been blighted by poor weather and bacterial attack as well as a proliferation of insects, resulting in a “black year” for oil production.

Consumers can expect the price of olive oil to rise.

Death sentence for UK’s grey squirrels

squirellThe Forestry Commission plans to give millions of pounds of public money to landowners to cull grey squirrels.

There are some five million grey squirrels in the UK and this plan is the first national one to manage their numbers.

Smugglers reap $3m from one hazardous voyage

refugeeship2The Italian police believe that the people smugglers who abandoned ship last week made $3 million on just the one trip of the Ezadeen which was carrying 359 illegal migrants, mostly from Syria.

The abandoned cargo ship was found by coast guards and towed into the Italian port of Corigliano Calabro on Friday night.

New treasury agency appointees earn more than Portugal's PM

eurozoneSome of the new administrators at the Treasury Management and Public Debt Agency (IGCP) who took office last September are on a monthly salary well above that of Portugal’s Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho and indeed the President of the Republic, Cavaco Silva.

A notice in the Official Gazette last Friday noted the new salaries of the three new members of the IGCP board.

Welcome to the world, Maria Constança

baby2012The first new baby in Portugal for 2015 was a girl, delivered at midnight +55 seconds in the Centro Materno Infantil in Oporto.

The parents thought it would be just another visit to the hospital but the timing could not have been more auspicious as less than a minute into 2015 they had claim to the first born for the new year.

Death rate on Portugal's roads 'similar to 1950'

oldcarPortugal's National Road Safety Authority has announced the national road death figure for 2014 with a comment that 'you would have to go back to 1950, when there were about 100,000 vehicles on the road, to match a figure of under 500 fatalities.'

With 7 million vehicles now registered in Portugal there were only 480 fatalities in 2014, a decrease of 7.3% compared to 2013.

Cologne Cathedral protests with darkness

colognecathedralAnti-Islamisation marches in Germany have spread from Dresden to other parts of Germany.

A demonstration planned for Cologne has been met with opposition from the cathedral there which has said it will switch off its lights in protest.