As the Bank of Portugal continues to make heavy weather of choosing the right buyer for Novo Banco, stuck with four lacklustre bids that will trigger a political storm when revealed, a new contender has appeared out of nowhere.
Minsheng Financial has put in a bid that has not been through the labourious application process and the BoP governor Carlos Costa has not dismissed this approach out of hand, as perhaps he should.
One person died at the scene and six were hospitalised with serious injuries after two cars collided just after 02:00 on Saturday morning on the EN125 near Tavira.
According to a report from the rescue operation district command (CDOS) in Faro, "six people were assisted on site by emergency ambulance personnel and taken to Faro hospital."
The left Bloc’s leader, Catarina Martins, has accused the government of freezing spending in the health service in an attempt to make the national year-end figures look better.
"The Government has made an order which effectively freezes spending in the National Health Service," said Martins, adding that this simply is massaging the figures.
The leader of Spain’s Socialist party has been booted out of office.
The end came for Pedro Sánchez by a vote of 132 to 107 after ten hours of turbulent debate at an emergency executive committee meeting in Madrid on Saturday.
Southern European countries have the highest proportion of people in the EU aged 80 or more.
Across the EU, nearly 27 million people had already celebrated their 80th birthdays when the data was collected in 2015. This was seven million more in the decade from 2005.
The Government is pushing through a proposal to 'harmonise' the tax rates payable by those letting properties.
The current variation in tax rates has left an opportunity for the State to raise more money from those registered for Alojamento Local short-term property lettings.
Currently the tax payable on long-term lettings is 28% yet the rate payable on the income from short-term Alojamento Local (AL) registered properties is just 5%, a difference that the government wants to harmonise in next year’s State Budget.
Germany took in 890,000 refugees last year, not the widely reported 1.1 million, as confirmed by the country’s interior minister.
Thomas de Maizière told a press conference on Friday that the true figure for asylum seekers entering Germany last year stood at “around 890,000”.
Portugal’s president has refused to sign off the new banking secrecy law that allowed the Tax Authority access to accounts containing €50,000 or more.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said the proposed change in the law would be patently inappropriate due to the sensitive process of consolidation in the Portuguese banking sector, the need not to undermine the confidence of depositors and investors, and the likelihood of the taxman displaying ‘an excess of zeal.’
