Tuesday 9 Feb 2010 News
The coach of the national football team in Portugal, Carlos Queiroz, said he was pleased with last Sunday’s draw in Poland for Euro 2012 qualifying groups. Portugal will play Denmark, Norway, Cyprus and Iceland in one of the five team draws. Mr Queiroz told the press that he believed his side has a good chance of progressing and said: “It’s a good group for us, playing teams with different styles of football. It will be a group that will produce good performances and will be exciting, and I think that we can qualify….We have to prepare well, as always, but I think in the end we will have reached the European Championship finals.”
Portugal has been included in one of the tournament’s five team groups which will mean a reduction in fixtures and will allow the coach more time with his players: “Considering the teams we have, this allows us to play around with the dates a little, and it will give us extra time to train and work. It is rare to have this opportunity and we will try to use it,” he said.
The Banco Espirito Santo in Portugal confirmed to Reuters news agency on Monday that it has bought a majority stake in privately owned stockbroker Execution Noble, paying £50 million for a 50.1 per cent stake. The bank hopes to create a new emerging market-focussed investment bank by combining BES investment banking activities in Brazil, central Europe and Africa with Execution Noble's already established presence in London, New York and Hong Kong. An executive director, Tara Cemlyn-Jones based within BES’s investment unit told the press "Where we're going to add value and where we're going to differentiate ourselves is obviously going to be in the emerging markets component." Following the announcement shares in BES were up 0.9 per cent at €3.77 euros at 1.20 pm GMT yesterday.
A research organisation has issued a report on the mobile phone market in Portugal which states that “Portugal will have 17.2 million mobile subscribers in 2014 with TMN enjoying higher margins than Vodafone and Optimus over the next five years" to their offering”. The forecast is said to be one of the most accurate in the industry and includes operators: TMN -Telecomunicaes Mveis Nacionais S.A., Vodafone Portugal, Comunicaes Pessoais, S.A., and Optimus Telecomunicaes, S.A.
The report forecasts that the number of total wireless subscriber accounts in Portugal will increase from 15.9 million in 2009 to 17.2 million in 2014. All operators will see their numbers of subscribers increase over the next five years and TMN's subscriber base is expected to increase from 7.05 million in 2009 to 7.59 million in 2014 with the prediction that Vodafone Portugal’s mobile subscriber base will increase from 5.66 million to 6.03 million and that of Optimus will increase from 3.26 to 3.59 million over the forecast period, 2009 - 2014. For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research
The Minister of Labour Maria Helena André, said yesterday that the Ministry hopes to recover around €400 million debt owed to Social Security. Efforts will be made in 2010 to claw back monies owed in social security payments nationally. The Minister made the announcement at a parliamentary hearing in Lisbon on Monday.
Guilty verdict for police commander
A Metropolitan Police Commander has been given a two year prison sentence and two years on licence for assaulting and falsely arresting a man in a row over £600 for work on the Commander’s website.
Commander Ali Dizaei, the UK’s most senior Asian officer, came into conflict with Mr Al-Baghdadi, 24, who demanded payment for his work. Mr Al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi national who has lived in the UK since 2003, told the court he confronted the police officer after seeing him drunk and dancing at a restaurant in Kensington, west London, in July 2008. Mr Dizaei produced handcuffs and arrested Mr Al-Baghdadi. The court found that Mr Dizaei had made a number of false claims to frame his business associate, and that once he realised the discrepancies in his account, he tried to have the case dropped.
Mr. Dizaei was convicted of misconduct in a public office and perverting the course of justice. He was told by the judge that he was guilty of a "wholesale abuse of power" motivated by self-interest and pride.
Mr Dizaei, 47, has survived a series of earlier inquiries into his behaviour, including a multi-million pound undercover operation examining claims of corruption, fraud and dishonesty. He was suspended on full pay on September 2008, but now could be fired from the Metropolitan Police with which he had served for 24 years. Last November Dizaei was cleared of misusing his corporate credit card.
Silver scribblers sought
The Booktrust charity has launched a writing contest to tempt older people to join book clubs and to write their own short stories and novels. Their Bookbite project is backed by leading writers such as Sir Andrew Motion and Marina Lewycka.
Bookbite surveyed 1,162 people over 60 and the results suggested they were increasingly confident with the internet which they were often using to search for information about books. No less than 55 per cent claimed the internet was a crucial part of their lives, while 31 per cent were keen to go online to publish short stories and join book clubs. In addition, 29 per cent said they wanted to research their family tree online - rising to 40 per cent for those over 76. Not everyone surveyed, however, used the internet, citing cost, confidence and lack of access.
Publisher HarperCollins said that a "very high number" of aspiring writers over 50 are contacting their authonomy website, a new community site for writers, readers and publishers.
Older successful authors include Marina Lewycka who was 59 when her first novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, was nominated for the Orange Prize, Mary Wesley, famous for the Camomile Lawn and Jumping the Queue, who started writing novels in her 70s and Frank McCourt whose memoir Angela's Ashes was published when he was 66.
Bookbite launches on Monday, and more than 100,000 magazines will be distributed throughout England via the charity WRVS, other organisations such as Age Concern and local libraries, as well as being available to download from the new website from next week - www.bookbite.org.uk
Scottish wine
A chef has revealed his plans to produce Scotland’s first commercially-available wine from four different varieties of grape vines he has planted in the grounds of his hotel in Perthshire on the banks of Loch Tav.
Pete Gottgens, originally from South Africa, said his inspiration came from the dessert wines produced in countries such as Canada and Sweden which have harsher winters than Scotland but better summer sunshine, which is the critical factor.
While he admitted the wine was not going to rival any of the great wine-producing areas of the world, he wants to sell the wine in his restaurant and enable guests to see the production process.
Immigration tightened
The country’s immigration minister has said Australia would in future look for more highly skilled workers amongst applicants seeking to migrate there.
Currently there is a list of eligible 106 skills, but this will be abolished in favour of a new focus on health workers, including more doctors and nurses, as well as engineering and mining. The move was welcomed by Australia's mining sector which is struggling to find tens of thousands of staff to support major firms such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto which are expanding in order to meet China's growing demand for resources.
Last year 170,000 people applied to live and work permanently in Australia as skilled migrants, but there were just 108,100 places available. Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that 4.4 million people in Australia were born overseas.
Recently a number of people have sought to gain residency in the country based on hairdressing and catering vocational courses, particularly students from Asia. Education authorities have long feared that the students were using the system solely to gain Australian residence.
