The fire started on the Spanish side of the border early on Saturday, crossed into the Montesinho natural park and destroyed a Vinhais fire engine with five crew aboard. Civil protection declared it under control at 7.50am on Sunday.

By Marta Carneiro

Photo: Ana Lucas Marinho / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The quake struck the north coast of Flores at 5.58am local time on Saturday. More than 1,300 homes are damaged, about 5,000 people are displaced and over 230 aftershocks were recorded on day one.

A magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off the Indonesian island of Flores early on Saturday, killing at least 51 people. The epicentre sat about 68 kilometres north-northwest of the town of Ende, in East Nusa Tenggara province, at 5.58am local time — figures recorded on the US Geological Survey's event page for the quake. The toll climbed through the weekend. It began at two confirmed deaths in the first hours, passed 38 and then 47, and reached 51 on Sunday…

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The green rail pass costs €20 a month and has so far excluded the suburban lines around both metropolitan areas. The prime minister says that changes in September.

For almost two years Portugal has had a rail pass that carries you from Bragança to Faro for €20 a month, and for almost two years it has had a hole in the middle of it. The suburban lines around Lisbon and Porto — where a very large share of the country actually commutes — were left out. Prime minister Luís Montenegro said on Friday, at his party's summer rally in the Algarve, that the green rail pass will be extended to urban trains in both metropolitan…

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The military-backed government confirmed that more than 300,000 refugees in Bangladeshi camps were residents of Rakhine state and will be accepted back once security improves. Nine years after the exodus, that condition still has no date.

Myanmar said on Saturday it has verified more than 300,000 of the Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh as former residents of Rakhine state, in the country's west, and will accept them back once security conditions improve. The figure says less than it appears to, and it only makes sense next to the other one. Around 1.15 million Rohingya refugees live in the Cox's Bazar camps and on Bhasan Char island, according to joint Government of…

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The vote was 468 to 88. The 12-article law suspends sentences and postpones prosecutions for five or ten years, but stays frozen until Turkish authorities verify the PKK has fully given up its weapons.

Turkey's Grand National Assembly has passed a law clearing the way for thousands of Kurdistan Workers' Party militants to be pardoned. The vote was 468 in favour and 88 against, a margin that says most of what needs saying about how far this has stopped being a party-political question in Ankara. The text runs to 12 articles and is not an amnesty in the ordinary sense. It suspends prison sentences already handed down to convicted PKK members and postpones…

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The Chiba weather station logged 351 mm on 13 August, the largest daily total in a series going back to 1966, and 115 mm in a single hour. Six thousand people spent the night inside Narita airport.

Chiba sits east of Tokyo, it holds one of the Japanese capital's two big international airports, and it is in theory one of the best-prepared places on earth for heavy rain. On Thursday that was not enough. The Japan Meteorological Agency logged 351 millimetres of rain at the Chiba station on 13 August. That is the largest daily total in a series beginning in 1966, and it clears the previous record of 259.5 millimetres, set in 1996, by a wide margin. In…

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A European Commission Joint Research Centre bulletin published on 12 August puts 50% of EU and UK territory under some level of drought in July, with 505,683 hectares burned across the EU by 5 August against 379,392 on the same date in 2025.

Half of the European Union and the UK sat under some level of drought through July. That figure comes from the bulletin the European Commission's Joint Research Centre published on 12 August, and it arrives with a harder one beside it: 505,683 hectares had burned across the EU by 5 August, against 379,392 by the same date last year.

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History A climbed from 94 to 109 points and descriptive geometry fell from 108 to 95. Some 85,745 papers were sat, 2,663 fewer than in 2025, and the no-show rate went from 6% to 9%.

Average marks in the second phase of Portugal's national secondary exams improved in 16 of the 24 papers sat, measured against 2025. The figures come from the Júri Nacional de Exames and were released by the education ministry late in the afternoon of 12 August. History A rose furthest, from 94 to 109 points on the 0-200 scale. Descriptive geometry fell furthest, from 108 to 95. What sits between those two ends is more interesting than either. Among the…

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The man was detained on a domestic violence warrant, questioned by a judge and freed on condition of reporting to a police station every two weeks. The government says it is holding extra officers in Lisbon's tourist areas.

The man detained after the shooting that wounded a Swedish tourist on Rua Augusta, in central Lisbon, has been released. He appeared before a judge for a first questioning and was freed on condition that he reports to his local PSP station every two weeks. One detail explains the decision and got lost in most of this week's argument about it. The arrest was not made over the shooting. He was picked up on a warrant issued in a separate domestic violence…

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An average of 0.8 millimetres of rain fell across the mainland, under 8% of the normal figure for the month, and meteorological drought went from covering 60% of the country to all of it.

Mainland Portugal recorded an average of 0.8 millimetres of rain across the whole of July. That is under 8% of what the month normally delivers, according to IPMA's provisional figures. It makes July 2026 the driest July of this century, and the eighth driest since comparable records began in 1931. Outside Viana do Castelo and Braga, essentially nothing fell anywhere. The drought map moved accordingly. At the end of June, meteorological drought covered…

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Red flags went up at La Concha, Ondarreta and Zurriola as Portuguese man-o'-war colonies crowded the Basque coast, and the city council now reassesses conditions every two hours at most.

The Portuguese man-o'-war is not a jellyfish. It is a floating colony trailing a tentacle that can run for metres, and this month enough of them reached the Gipuzkoa coast for lifeguards to raise the red flag in the middle of the swimming season. The peak came on 4 August. San Sebastián's beaches logged roughly 120 sting cases needing assistance in a single day, the overwhelming majority of them minor, according to the city council. Earlier in the week…

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The magnitude 7.4 quake struck San José del Palmar in Chocó at a depth of about 103km. Five departmental capitals are on red alert and seven airports have suspended operations.

At least 132 people were killed and 570 injured by the earthquake that hit western Colombia on Monday morning. The toll is provisional and rescue teams are still working through rubble in several cities. The epicentre was San José del Palmar, in the department of Chocó, roughly 400km west of Bogotá. The Colombian Geological Service put the magnitude at 7.4 and the depth at about 103km, while the USGS record for the event puts it at 110km. Either way it is…

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Syria's Fourth Criminal Court convicted the ousted president of premeditated murder and torture. He was tried in absentia and remains in Russia, so the sentence cannot be carried out.

A court in Damascus sentenced Bashar al-Assad to death on Tuesday, convicting him in absentia of premeditated murder, torture and crimes against humanity. It is the first capital sentence handed down against the ousted president or anyone in his inner circle since the regime collapsed in December 2024. Assad was not there to hear it. He has lived in Russia since fleeing, and unless Moscow returns him the sentence stays on paper. His brother Maher al-Assad…

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The epicentre sat about 18 kilometres east of Odemira. Ourique felt it most strongly, at intensity IV, with weaker shaking in Almodôvar and Santiago do Cacém. No damage was reported.

It happened at 3.08 on Monday morning. Portugal's institute for the sea and atmosphere, the IPMA, recorded a magnitude 3.5 earthquake with its epicentre roughly 18 kilometres east of Odemira, in the Beja district. No injuries and no damage have been reported. The shaking reached a maximum intensity of IV on the modified Mercalli scale in the Ourique council, and was felt more faintly in Almodôvar and in Santiago do Cacém, across the line in the Setúbal…

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Bragança, Vila Real, Viseu and Guarda go under a yellow warning from 9am Tuesday until 9pm Wednesday. Madeira and Porto Santo have been under one since today.

The heat is not going anywhere this week. The IPMA has placed the districts of Bragança, Vila Real, Viseu and Guarda under a yellow warning for persistently high temperatures, running from 9am on Tuesday to 9pm on Wednesday. In the islands the warning is already live. The north and south coasts of Madeira and the island of Porto Santo went yellow today, and stay that way until 6pm on Wednesday. Yellow is the mildest of the three levels. It is not a…

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