Lisbon

Portuguese midfielder Luis Figo said Monday that he plans on ending his top-level career when his Inter Milan contract runs out at the end of the year. ”My top-level career will end in Italy,” he told the media. ”That was my intention when I arrived in Italy two years ago. It’s my decision. I decided a long time ago not to come back to play in Portugal.”

Spain’s Carlos Sainz won the second stage of the Dakar Rally on Sunday, ahead of Mitsubishi’s Nani Roma and Luc Alphand. Sainz, driving for Volkswagen, clocked 59 minutes and 26 seconds, while Roma and Alphand both timed 59:55 to finish second and third respectively.

A Portuguese pensioner caused mild commuter chaos in the city of Oporto this week when he unwittingly drove his car into the underground train network, Portuguese newspapers reported on Tuesday. Trains were suspended after security cameras clocked the disoriented driver sailing past a station through the railway tunnels meant for underground trains.

More than 600kg of cocaine of unknown origin has washed up on Portuguese and Spanish beaches in the past month, the Lusa news agency reported on Thursday, quoting a Portuguese navy spokesperson. About 30 packages of 22kg each have been found, Commander Bras e Melo said, adding that they were thought to have been thrown overboard by drug-smugglers who panicked.

A plane from Angolan state airline TAAG made an emergency landing on Monday in Lisbon just 15 minutes after taking off from the Portuguese capital due to technical problems, officials said. The Boeing 747, which was bound for the Angolan capital Luanda, landed safely at Portela airport, Portugal’s busiest, just before 7am (6am GMT).

Two teams planned to play Benfica on Sunday after a series of clashing soccer federation and court rulings threw the Portuguese league into chaos on its opening weekend. Benfica was originally scheduled to play Belenenses but Gil Vicente said on Saturday it would also show up at the Stadium of Light.

FC Porto striker Benni McCarthy is close to signing with English Premiership side Blackburn Rovers for three years, the South African international forward said in a newspaper interview. ”I’m sad because I’m leaving many friends behind at FC Porto … It was at FC Porto that I experienced success,” he told Tuesday’s daily newspaper Jornal de Noticias in Portugal.

Portuguese police on Tuesday captured a kangaroo that had been on the loose in suburban Lisbon for three days after escaping from a farm where it was being held illegally as a pet. Police received the first report that a kangaroo had been spotted on the streets of Sintra, about 30km north-west of Lisbon, on Sunday morning.

A 62-year-old retired man plans to travel from his hometown in Portugal to Germany by bicycle in order to attend the 2006 World Cup, which gets underway on June 9. Jose Fortunato left Vila Franca de Xira, some 30km north-east of Lisbon, on Sunday and he expects to arrive in Munich, which will host the opening game of the 64-match tournament, on June 8.

A shop in Portugal plans to start selling ice cream in flavours such as shrimp, cod, tuna and grilled sardines when it opens next month, Lusa news agency reported on Thursday. The store will offer 60 exotic flavours alongside traditional options such as chocolate and vanilla, its owner told the agency.

Luis Figo, Cristiano Ronaldo and the rest of Portugal’s national team will be served healthy doses of chicken soup during the World Cup in Germany to ward off homesickness, the squad’s chef has said. Helio Loureiro, who has cooked for the team for eight years, told daily newspaper 24Horas there is nothing like the soup ”to give strength and revive family memories”.

Flood-stricken Mozambique is bracing for a nationwide outbreak of cholera, which has already claimed two lives in the central Sofala region, the nation’s ambassador to Portugal said on Monday. ”We expect that at any moment cholera will spread to the entire country,” ambassador Miguel Mkaima told a Lisbon news conference.

A man who went to a Portuguese police station to beg for money wound up behind bars after officers found he was a wanted criminal, daily newspaper Correio da Manha reported on Monday. The 32-year-old man told officers that he needed the cash to return to his home in northern Portugal.

About one million people in Mozambique are facing hunger because of an ongoing drought in the south-eastern African nation, Mozambican President Armando Guebuza said in an interview on Wednesday. Mozambique, along with most parts of Southern Africa, is experiencing its fourth consecutive year of drought.

Church bells tolled across Lisbon on Tuesday as Portugal marked the 250th anniversary of one of the most destructive and deadly earthquakes in history which reduced most of its capital to rubble and sent shockwaves across Europe. Thousands more lives were lost to the giant waves which struck other parts of Portugal’s southern coast, southwestern Spain and North Africa.

Police in Portugal have charged a man with drug-trafficking offences after he sold a 20-year-old a bag of beans that he claimed were Ecstasy pills, daily newspaper <i>Correio da Manha</i> reported on Saturday. The youth met the man, who police say is a known drug dealer, on Thursday in the northern town of Matosinhos.

A museum in Portugal will later this year unveil a metal reproduction of Chelsea coach Jose Mourinho’s iconic grey coat that he wore on the touchlines last season, public television RTP reported. The replica will go on display at Lisbon’s Fashion and Clothing Museum as part of a temporary exhibit.

Manchester United assistant manager Carlos Queiroz has defended his record as coach at Real Madrid, saying the Spanish club’s disastrous start to the new season shows he was not the cause of its weakness. ”What is going on now with the club just proves that my work was not judged fairly by the management of the club,” he said.

Portugal’s biggest bank robber yet, on the run since escaping prison in March, has been recaptured by police after he returned to the country to rent a home, police and reports said on Tuesday. Manuel Simoes netted more than &euro;500&nbsp;000 (R3,91-million) in 29 bank robberies carried out between 1998 and 2000.

Embarrassed Portuguese police said on Friday they had made a mistake when they announced that an early-morning roadcheck in a Lisbon neighbourhood had found 90% of drivers over the alcohol limit. They later reported that the real figure was less than 10%.

A random police check in the early hours of Friday in a Lisbon neighbourhood known for its nightlife found 90% of drivers had a blood-alcohol level above the legal limit. Of the 653 drivers that police stopped between 2.30am and 7.30am, 585 had a blood-alcohol level above 0,5g per litre of blood, police said in a statement.

Cooler temperatures and higher air humidity levels helped firefighters in parched Portugal on Wednesday contain more than a dozen blazes that raged across the country, but officials cautioned that the risk of new fires remained high. Five fires were burning out of control in the thick-wooded centre and north of the country.