Portugal

LISBON, May 4 (Reuters) - Investigators have found new evidence potentially incriminating the key suspect in the disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann 15 years ago, said Hans Christian Wolters, the German prosecutor who has been investigating the case since 2020.

In an interview with Portuguese TV channel CMTV on Tuesday, Wolters said detectives believed they had found "some facts, some new evidence", adding: "We are sure that he (Brueckner) is the murderer of Madeleine McCann."

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Prosecutors in southern Portugal are formally accusing a suspect in the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, a British girl who disappeared nearly 15 years ago while on a family vacation in the southern European country.

A statement on Thursday by the Public Ministry district of Faro, the largest city in Portugal’s Algarve region, did not name the suspect but said they were acting on a request by German authorities and in coordination with English investigators.

LISBON, March 24 (Reuters) - Authorities on a mid-Atlantic Portuguese island hit by thousands of small earthquakes in recent days started evacuating people living at the bottom of coastal cliffs on Thursday as fears of a stronger tremor or a volcanic eruption grow.

Since Saturday, over 2,000 earthquakes, with a magnitude of between 1.6 and 3.3, have been recorded on the volcanic island of Sao Jorge in the Azores archipelago, according to the region's CIVISA seismo-volcanic surveillance centre.

LISBON, March 25 (Xinhua) -- Portugal's general government deficit was 2.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2021, Statistics Portugal (INE) said on Friday, confirming previous forecasts by Banco de Portugal and the Public Finance Council (CFP).

According to the INE, the public administration had a negative balance (net borrowing) of 5.977 billion euros (6.566 billion U.S. dollars).

In the fiscal year 2020, the country's government ran a deficit of 5.8 percent of GDP.

LISBON, March 16 (Reuters) - Portugal will implement all sanctions decided at EU level against Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich but is not able to ban him from entering the country because he is a citizen, Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva said on Wednesday.

LISBON, March 12 (Reuters) - A rabbi responsible for the certification that allowed Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and others to obtain Portuguese citizenship is not allowed to leave the country and must present himself to authorities when required, Lusa news agency said on Saturday.

Officers of the Judicial Police, the national criminal investigation agency, detained rabbi Daniel Litvak on Thursday as part of an ongoing public prosecutors inquiry into how Chelsea soccer club owner Abramovich was granted citizenship. 

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — A fire aboard a ship carrying cars in the mid-Atlantic is dying out, a Portuguese navy officer said Tuesday, and the huge vessel is expected to be towed to the Bahamas.

The blaze on the Felicity Ace has burned for six days near Portugal’s Azores Islands. A Portuguese Air Force helicopter evacuated the 22 crew members last week, leaving the 200-meter-long (650-foot-long) vessel adrift.

LISBON, Feb 17 (Reuters) - As an Omicron-fuelled wave of infections ebbs, Portugal said on Thursday it would drop most of its remaining coronavirus rules, including the requirement to show the COVID-19 digital pass to stay at hotels or a negative test to enter nightclubs.

"This is a very important moment," Cabinet Minister Mariana Vieira da Silva told a news conference. "This is another a step towards a return to normal life."

LISBON, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Thousands of Portuguese voters living across Europe will be asked to cast their ballots for a second time in March, the National Electoral Commission (CNE) has announced, delaying the swearing in of a new Socialist government elected on Jan. 30.

The partial rerun comes after the top court ruled on Tuesday that an informal agreement by political parties to scrap a requirement for voters to include a copy of their identity document with their mail-in ballot was "grossly illegal", deeming 157,000 such votes invalid.

LISBON, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa announced on Wednesday that Antonio Costa has been nominated to continue as head of the country's new government.

The decision was announced in a note published on the official website of the Presidency of the Portuguese Republic. In accordance with Portuguese law, the appointment was made as a result of the legislative elections on Jan. 30, after having heard the political parties represented in the new Assembly of the Republic.