A scheme to produce low-cost electricity is costing Portuguese consumers €1 each per month, an unwanted €50 million-a-year added to electricity bills.

Companies responsible for producing electricty from Portugal's dams, buy subsidised 'wind power' electricity produced at night, for almost nothing. This is used to pump water from rivers back into the reservoirs.

Portugal's banks are under pressure to reduce and then limit the amount they charge for running customers accounts, having increased substantially montly fees in recent years - despite heavy criticism from consumer associations and many MPs.

Portugal’s avaricious bankers have turned to the use of confusing packages or service accounts, using a template to deliberately complicate matters and get around what they feel are painfully low charges for running accounts.

Eduardo Miranda, president of the Local Accommodation Association in Portugal (ALEP), highlighted the sector's role in boosting tourism, saying that local accommodation allowed a "greater capacity" for accommodation in Portugal, "which was necessary and fundamental in the growth of tourism," and also brought diversity, while improving the competitiveness of tourism in international terms.

"Without local accommodation, it was absolutely impossible to think of the growth that tourism has today," said Miranda, indicating that this type of tourist accommodation already represents "a third of overnight stays and close to that in terms of the number of guests."

Portugal's prime minister, António Costa, said in his Christmas Eve message that the biggest national deficit is in knowledge and he said he would continue the fight against poverty and job insecurity, in the name of a "decent society."

António Costa chose to deliver his speech, not from the official residence in São Bento, but from the Lumiar Kindergarten, in Lisbon.

"Sixty years ago today, a young woman spoke about the speed of technological change as she presented the first television broadcast of its kind."*

"Television has made it possible for many of you to see me in your homes on Christmas Day. My own family often gather round to watch television, as they are at this moment. And that is how I imagine you now.

Pope Francis called for world peace and highlighted the plight of children scarred by conflict in his "Urbi et Orbi" (To the City and The World) message.

The Pope addressed tens of thousands of worshippers gathered at the Vatican, as he called for peace for Jerusalem and the Holy Land and urged the world to see Jesus in the faces of little children caught in the middle of war.

King Felipe VI used his traditional Christmas Eve address on Sunday night to call on Catalonia's newly elected parliament to renounce any further moves toward splitting from Spain.

"The way forward cannot once again lead to confrontation or exclusion that, as we now know, only generates discord, uncertainty, anguish," Felipe VI said in his televised speech.

Pulp mill operator, Celtejo, has demanded €250,000 in compensation from the environmentalist who pointed out the fact that the pollution levels in the waters of the Tejo, downriver from the industrial plant at Vila Velha de Rodão, were unaccaptable as millions of fish had been killed. (here)

The environmentalist, Arlindo Consolado Marquês, today said he was "very sad and very shaken" after Celtejo had instituted a defamation process, for associating the company's name with pollution levels in Rio de Janeiro.