'Furnace Friday,' 'Stultifying Saturday,' call these days what you will - but Thursday's start to an epic heatwave saw several of Portugal's cities among the hottest in the world.
Data from the IPMA weather service showed ten of the 18 district capitals in Portugal hitting 40ºC or more - Riyadh, 42ºC, and Kuwait at 43ºC were topped by Santarém at 45ºC and Évora at 44ºC.
Many of Portugal’s citizens and foreign residents, living in the southern part of the country, were impressed today to receive a SMS message from the National Civil Protection Authority warning of extreme risk of rural fires in the Beja and Faro districts.
Telecommunications regulator, ANACOM, has been working with mobile phone network operators, and radios and TV stations, to get the message across that the extreme heat could turn a small fire into a life-threatening catastrophe.
Telecoms company, Altice, has outwitted the government and secured a majority shareholding in SIRESP, the vital emergency communications system that failed so badly during last year’s fires. Altice is owned by the billionaire, Patrick Drahi, who has French, Israeli and Portuguese passports.
The Netherlands-based company, that ultimately owns Portugal’s MEO, exercised its preemptive rights through Altice Portugal and snapped up the shares in SIRESP that were held by ESEGUR and Datacomp.
A pod of orcas has been spotted and photographed off the Ria Formosa island of Culatra.
"We saw 10 or 11 orcas divided into two subgroups, about three to four miles from the coast," said marine biologist Alfredo Rodrigues.
A Portuguese national has been convicted of killing a man in Spain twelve-and-a-half-years ago.
The crime dates to December 18, 2005, when the prostitute from Brazil, with Portuguese nationality, stabbed her client 16 times with a kitchen knife.
The European Commission has decided that Portugal’s government has complied with Community rules in the Aljezur oil test well process and that it is up to the government to decide whether there should be an environmental impact assessment.
"The Commission has no reason to consider that the procedure to waive the environmental impact assessment for the Aljezur test well was not in accordance with Directive 2011/92 / EU", which deals with oil exploration and extraction activities.
The Minister of Internal Affairs visited the Loulé air base on Wednesday, and declared that everything is ready and in place to fight any fires that may break out in the Algarve.
Eduardo Cabrita said the Algarve is ready, indeed the entire country is ready as part of a wider government plan, especially pertinent now that the Algarve is heading towards a 'red alert' for high temperatures, low humidity of under 30% and brisk winds of around 30kmph to fan any flames.
Supporters from one of the Algarve’s anti-oil campaigning organisations are to walk along the beach from Vale de Lobo to GIGI beach at Quinta do Lago, on the morning of August 10th, where an open letter to the President of the Republic will be read out in the wake of the PM's TV blunder.
The Movement for an Algarve Fee of Oil (MALP) says the walk is an anti-oil protest specifically against oil exploration in the Algarve and against the Aljezur test well due to be sunk this Autumn.
