Canada is to open its doors again in its quest to encourage greater economic growth.
The country wants thousands of skilled expats to move in during the course of 2014.
Its ambitious immigration scheme aims to fill a number of gaps in the labour market.
The Christmas spirit in Denmark was not the same this year as a serious threat to the baking industry hung over the country.
The kanelsnegler, or cinnamon roll, has been eyed by the European Union for possible extinction.
EU regulations aim to limit the amount of coumarin, a toxic chemical which occurs naturally and is present in the typical kind of cinnamon, cassia.
As storms battered the UK over Christmas, at the same time sixty sunbathers in Argentina were bitten by piranhas.
The mass attack took place on Christmas Day at a popular river beach in the city of Rosario.
People there were trying to escape the heat as temperatures climbed to 100ºF. Swimmers, bleeding from bites, suddenly began to run out of the water, shouting for help.
Rain, hail, lightning, snow, plunging temperatures; these are just some of the delights in store over the next few days leading up to New Year’s Eve, according to the brutally factual forecast put out today by the Portuguese Institute of Ocean and Atmosphere.
According to the IPMA, between December 27th and January 1st 'weather conditions in continental Portugal will be affected by a disturbed westerly air flow which is expected to bring successive fronts, with alternating masses of tropical and then polar air.’
The wreckage of three shanty town dwellings in Faro, destroyed by fire on Monday 16th of December, are to be cleared away to allow space for an organic vegetable garden.
Nine people were made homeless after the blaze, though to have been caused by the ignition of a gas bottle.
Portugal’s Tax Authority is working on a computer programme that will assign a unique number to each receipt issued in a scheme to offer the public lottery style prizes for registering their purchases.
The collaboration with the Santa Casa da Misericordia de Lisboa involves developing the computer programme to assign a number to each invoice issued from January 1st, and then a way of holding a monthly draw.
A body was found on Thursday in Fonte da Telha, Sesimbra area, by a searcher who said that “it is probably the missing lad," the young man who was part of the group of seven students, six of whom were swept to their death by a wave at Praia do Meco on December 15th.
The body was found mid-morning at the Fonte da Telha beach and the authorities were alerted.
Fifteen districts in Portugal are on alert due to wind, rain, snow and angry seas.
Portugal’s weather institute, the IPMA, has posted a red alert along the shoreline of Lisbon and Leiria districts as waves crash into the mainland.
