The Minister of Education, Tiago Brandão Rodrigues, has announced that the nation’s schools budget is to receive a boost of €80 million from community funds and additional central government spending.
The Minister stressed that this new budget will allow 40 more schools to be refurbished, raising the total refurbishment spend to €735 million between 2016 and 2020.
"At the next Council of Ministers meeting, on Thursday, we will approve a contingency plan to ensure that all British residents in Portugal will be assured of peace, tranquility and security and will not be inconvenienced,” said Portugal’s prime minister, adding that the rights of Portuguese residents in the UK will be respected.
António Costa lamented the rejection by the British parliament of the UK's exit agreement from the European Union and said he hoped that the British government quickly would inform him of its next steps to avoid an uncontrolled exit on March 29th.
British MPs have defeated Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal, with 433 voting against and 202 voting for. Over 100 Conservative MPs helped vote down the deal in an historical defeat.
The result of Tuesday evening's vote has led to a sharp increased in the political chaos that has characterised British politics in the past two years.
A 75-year-old man who was found unconscious and floating in Tavira's Gilão River, has died.
The victim, in a serious condition, was rushed to the Vila Real de Santo António Health Center, but did not respond to treatment.
Increasing a suspicion that energy company EDP looks good on paper but in fact is rooted in the management practices of its State-owned past, an audit has shown how and where hundreds of millions of euros have been squandered during the building of hydro-electric dams.
EY describes examples of poor management control in the construction of several dams, such as Baixo Sabor, Ribeiradio Ermida and Foz Tua, which entailed ‘deviations’ of hundreds of millions of euros.
Despite a slowdown in the number of nights spent in Portugal, guests are paying more for their holidays, so the total take by the hotel sector continues to increase.
National tourism has eased off significantly with no records being broken as at the end of 2018.
Novo Banco, led by António Ramalho, is to ask the Resolution Fund for yet another capital injection, this one will be for €850 million, under the terms of the gift of the bank to US vulture fund, Lone Star.
Novo Banco is preparing its ‘request’ to the Resolution Fund under the disastrous, contingent capital arrangement agreed by the Bank of Portugal when it handed over 75% of the bank's shares to Lone Star, for free, with the proviso that the Resolution Fund injects money in Novo Banco whenever there are losses from asset sales that ‘impact the financial stability of the bank.’
So keen is Portugal to boost its resident population, the government is fully behind a Communist Party proposal to legalise ‘undocumented migrants residing in Portugal’ – aka, illegal immigrants.
This move does buck the current trend in Europe towards nationalism and xenophobia and is being pitched by the executive as an example of Portugal’s humanity.
