Madrid is planning to trigger the article that will allow the suspension of Catalonia’s political autonomy. This is planned for Saturday, after the break-away region’s leader missed a deadline to clarify his hitherto ambiguous declaration of independence.
The Catalan leader, Carles Puigdemont, was given a deadline of 10.30am on Thursday to make clear whether Catalonia had declared independence from Spain, or not.
A European Commissioner today announced that the EC is sympathetic to the tragedy that the Portuguese people have suffered in the recent fires and offers its full support.
The European Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Pierre Moscovici, said that any public expenditure needed after the devastating fires in Portugal should be considered as "exceptional circumstances" and will not be taken into account by Brussels in its annual assessment of Portugal’s budget.
A new sports complex is to be built next to the Parque das Cidades ‘Estádio Algarve’ football ground on the Loulé-Faro border at a cost of over €1 million.
Legally, the land is a grey area, shared by the two councils which also divide the cost of subsidising the existing football ground, built for the 2004 European Cup and widely recognised as one of the Algarve’s most outstanding white elephants.
The government may bang on about transparency and accountability but local councils continue to act in a covert, furtive and secretive manner, especially when big money is involved, twisting or ignoring environmental rules and fobbing off the public.
Environmental organisation Almargem has demanded a halt to the work of building a network of cement paths across a cliff-top beauty spot in the western Algarve and that a wide-ranging discussion takes place as to the future of Ponta da Piedade near Lagos.
Two people are dead after an early morning accident between two light vehicles on the new Almancil bypass that links Quatro-estradas in Loulé to the Estádio Algarve area on the IC4 Faro dual carriageway.
Three badly injured survivors of the crash were rushed to Faro hospital and are in ‘serious conditions’ according to sources at the District Operations Command.
According to a statement from the Portuguese Victim Support Association, on European Day to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings,
"the Human Trafficking Observatory has flagged up 264 trafficking situations in Portugal in 2016, reflecting an increase of 36.8% over the previous year and portraying Portugal as a destination country for the victims of various forms of exploitation.”
Banco Espírito Santo went bust in August 2014, some 1,172 days ago, but instead of letting the business collapse, the Bank of Portugal’s answer was to create a ‘bridge bank’ which it called Novo Banco, loading it with the ‘good’ assets of BES and issuing a mandate that the squeaky clean new business must be sold within three years
"The sale of the New Bank to Lone Star with a capital injection of €750 million is completed and, by the end of this year, a new entry of €250 million, which means the entry of €1 billion," announced the governor of the Bank of Portugal, Carlos Costa.
Military equipment, including grenades and high explosives, stolen from the military base at Tancos, Santarém, conveniently has turned up in the countryside not far away in Chamusca.
The material supposedly was found in the middle of an area of scrubland after an anonymous tip-off saw military police and GNR officers speeding to the site.
