Monday, August 8, 2016

Fire in car park of dance festival destroys 422 vehicles

Fire in car park of dance festival destroys 422 vehicles

IN NEWS ·


A fire that spread through a parking lot near a large festival in Portugal’s central interior yesterday completely destroyed 422 vehicles and damaged a further nine.

Around 4,000 festival-goers were advised to vacate the venue as a precaution. Fire-fighters brought the blaze under control in just over an hour with no victims to report.

Spread over 48 hectares the Andanças dance and music festival in Castelo de Vide in Portalegre expects to welcome some 40,000 visitors by Sunday.

GNR police are investigating the cause of the fire.

Quality of Portugal tap water is international 'level of excellence'

Portugal tap water quality at international 'level of excellence'

BY TPN/ LUSA, 
The quality of tap water in Portugal is excellent, according to international criteria, with 99% of good quality around the whole country, an official for the national regulatory agency for the sector, ERSAR, said on Thursday.
"We have gone from very good quality to a situation of excellence, and in 2015 we achieved for the first time 99% safe water, which is a criterion considered internationally to be a level of excellence," Luís Simas, the director of the agency's Quality Department, told Lusa. Simas, who was speaking after the release of the annual report on "Quality Control for Water for Human Consumption" for 2015, explained that where infringements are detected, 80% are pointers to a need for improvement in ways that do not directly affect health. Instead, they "function as a warning so that suitable measures are taken to avoid the situation worsening."


Most of such situations, he added, "are in the interior of the country, in smaller supply areas, and less along the coast and in densely inhabited areas."The remaining infringements are "related to compulsory parameters [and happen] occasionally, because of characteristics of the origin of the water or because the treatment did not function with the efficiency that it should have," he said. When these are detected, "the managing entity is obliged to correct them".

Last year, more than half a million analyses were carried out, with 330 left uncompleted. That, Simas said, is in line with previous years and means that controls are still being done "with great rigour and with results that make it possible to have a very precise and exact idea of the quality of tap water".

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Portugal’s SEF immigration office has announced call of strike

Immigration officials call of strike

IN NEWS ·

The union for Portugal’s SEF immigration office has announced in a statement that it had called off a strike planned for later this month.

Industrial action had been called for 11 and 12 August but the union said it was convinced to cancel the potentially crippling strike after the Home Affairs minister and the SEF director pledged to address the grievances of workers by the end of September.

Monday, August 1, 2016

Earthquake in Portugal


IN NEWS ·

An earthquake measuring 4.0 on the Richter scale was registered off the Algarve coast Monday morning.Information from the Portuguese Met office states that so far there are no reports of the quake having been felt.


The tremor happened at 4.48am and its epicentre was pinpointed at around 110 kilometres south of the coast of Faro.

An earthquake measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale was also registered on Sunday in the areas of Cadaval, Óbidos and Peniche, along Portugal's west coast.