Portugal

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.

Firefighting aircraft from Germany, Italy and The Netherlands headed to Portugal on Monday as the country struggled to contain its biggest wave of wildfires to hit so far this year amid rising temperatures. More than 2 700 firefighters were battling dozens of wildfires, including 27 that threatened some built-up areas.

A burglar who broke into an office in Portugal last week, making off with a portable safe that contained just &euro;10 (about R79), returned over the weekend to leave a note apologising for the theft, the Lusa news agency reported on Sunday. The envelope with the note was slipped into the mailbox of the office.

More than 1 400 firefighters and soldiers were on Tuesday combating eight wildfires in northern and central Portugal, news reports said. The biggest fire was reported in the Pampilhosa da Serra in Coimbra district, where nearly 400 firefighters were trying to contain a blaze raging since Saturday.

Nearly 3 100 firefighters and soldiers battled more than two dozen wildfires on Friday for a second straight day in Portugal, while a government official said he foresees ”great difficulties” in the days ahead. At least one man was severely burned. Portugal is enduring its worst drought on record.

An 81-year-old Portuguese woman remarried her former husband, who is 10 years older, on Thursday, more than three decades after she left him because of his womanizing, a daily newspaper reported. "He behaved badly and out of jealousy I left him after three years," Silvina Azenha told <i>Correio da Manha</i>.

Portugal’s oldest woman, and one of the oldest people in the world, has died at the age of 114, Portuguese media reported on Tuesday, quoting members of her family. Maria do Couto Maia, born on October 24 1890, had been confined to bed for the past three years after scalding her feet in an accident at home with boiling water.

Benfica won the Portuguese football league championship for the first time in 11 years on Sunday after drawing 1-1 at Boavista on the final day of the season. Striker Simao Sabrosa scored a penalty in the 38th minute but Boavista equalised four minutes later in a result where Benfica ensured a three-point lead over nearest rivals FC Porto.

CSKA Moscow came back to beat Sporting Lisbon 3-1 and win the Uefa Cup on Wednesday, with Daniel Carvalho setting up all three goals. CSKA became the first Russian team to win a European final. Dynamo Moscow came close, reaching the 1972 Cup Winners’ Cup final, but lost to Rangers.

World number-one Roger Federer has set his sights on sweeping the remaining three tennis grand slams this year, as well as the season-ending Masters finals in China. The Swiss star was in Portugal this week to accept a distinction at the annual Laureus sports awards.

Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio has called morning rush-hour traffic on a heavily used highway leading into Lisbon a "daily tragedy" after he braved the motorway without his usual police escort, reports said on Thursday. It took the president 40 minutes to travel just 13km on the IC19 highway.

A middle-aged couple walked into a casino near the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, over the weekend and left minutes later with &euro;641&nbsp;215 (R5,08-million) after putting just 60 cents into a slot machine, a casino spokesperson said Wednesday. The couple inserted three 20-cent coins into the machine.