TAP president calls for drone ban unless owners follow the law

5225The president of TAP, Fernando Pinto, will ask for all drones to be grounded if people don’t stop operating them in the flight path of incoming aircraft.

Pinto’s comments come after several drone near misses reported by commercial aircraft pilots, the latest being a TAP Express plane with 74 passengers on board narrowly missing a drone as it approached Lisbon airport on Sunday evening.

Isabel dos Santos buys António Domingues

ISABELDOSSANTOSBriefly president of Caixa Geral de Depósitos, António Domingues, has been thrown a financial bone by  Mário Leite Silva, president of Santoro, the personal holding company of Isabel dos Santos.

Domingues is to become a non-executive director of Banco de Fomento de Angola, an announcement that takes advantage of the current lull in the controversy over his botched 2016 attempt to alter the terms and conditions of his employment as president of Caixa Geral.

Italy forced to bail out two more banks for €5.2 billion

italy3The move to bail out two Italian banks for €5.2 billion last Friday (June 23rd) comes two days after the European Central Bank stated that Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca were “failing or likely to fail. “

Italy’s Prime Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, said the bailout was needed to protect savers and ensure "the good health of our banking system" with the good assets be taken over by the Intesa Sanpaolo banking group whose branches and employees will be under new management on Monday morning but up to 4,000 job losses are predicted.

India's visiting Prime Minister praises 65,000 fellow countrymen living in Portugal

IndianVisitIndia’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, arrived in Portugal on Saturday 24th June and praised the contribution of more than 65,000 of his countrymen living and working here.

Modi said that these were India’s “real ambassadors” and have enriched the culture of the country that they have made their home.

TAP goes 'retro' to celebrate 72nd birthday

taplogoFor those of us that thought Portugal’s privatised airline, TAP, was no fun anymore, the company run by Humberto Pedrosa and David Neeleman has gone retro and painted one of its Airbus A330-300s in a 1960s livery.

"We wanted to celebrate the journey that has been made so far with a very special paint job," said a TAP spokesman.

Portimão exhibition of traditional games and toys shows links to early trading routes

gamePortugal’s traditional childhood games may come from antiquity, from former colonies or from trading posts in far-flung places such as China and India.

Portimão Museum is hosting a new exhibition of games and toys, under the heading ‘Traditional Games - Remembering and Learning to Play,’ open from the evening of July 1st.

Seven locals caught on a Sagres beach with two tonne drug shipment

hash2Seven Portuguese men aged between 46 and 58, all from the western Algarve, were caught red-handed at dawn on Sunday as they unloaded 2 tonnes of Moroccan hashish.

The Portuguese authorities had been tracking the shipment and, by using night vision equipment, knew at which Sagres beach the criminals were going to collect the drug bales from the delivery boat.

Pedrógão Grande fire offically is over as Spain's Doñana park ignites

firehelicopterThe Pedrógão Grande fire officially was reported as extinguished mid-afternoon on Saturday, a week after it broke out.

Some 570 fire service personnel remain in the area, according to Miguel Cruz, from the National Civil Protection Agency, along with 214 vehicles as there are small pockets of fire within the perimeter that still need dealing with.