Portugal

With significant experience in the management of nonperforming loans (NPLs) and real estate owned properties (REOs), and more than 20 billion euros of managed assets, HipoGes Iberia, a KKR group company, enters the Greek market under the dual capacity of NPL manager and real estate services provider.

Spain and four other EU countries have agreed to accept migrants from the Open Arms rescue ship, EU authorities said today, cited by Reuters and BTA. 

Greece has the highest rate of motorcyclist deaths among the European Union's 28 member-states, according to the most recent data from the EU's statistics service Eurostat. 

Specifically, according to figures from 2017, Greece had 20.1 deaths per million inhabitants in that year, just above Malta with 20 deaths per million.

Portugal's Ryanair cabin crews have launched the first of the recently announced prolonged strike waves. The low-cost carrier has warned passengers that few flights will be affected and the government has ordered employees to perform the necessary minimum services to avoid chaos, Reuters reported.

A working meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his colleague Emmanuel Macron began in France.

Putin has expressed concern about the nuclear weapons test in space ban. However, he assured that there was no danger of increased radiation following the incident at a Russian Arctic landfill last week.

European Union annual inflation was 1.4% in July 2019, down from 1.6% in June. A year earlier, the rate was 2.2%. These figures are published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. The lowest annual rates were registered in Portugal (-0.7%), Cyprus (0.1%) and Italy (0.3%).

Eurostat data show that almost 44,7% of the territory of Bulgaria is covered with forests.

In the 2012-2015 period the forest area in Bulgaria has increased by 2,6%, BNR reported. With these numbers Bulgaria ranks 9th in the EU in forest territories. 

July 2019 was reported as the hottest month in the history of meteorological measurements, becoming the latest proof of the magnitude of the global climate crisis, WWF reports. The data are from the Copernicus European Union Climate Change Program, which analyzes temperature data from across the globe.

A group of 15 people - Romanian nationals and their family members, Syrian citizens - was repatriated from Syria via Turkey on Wednesday, the Romanian Foreign Ministry (MAE) reports. According to MAE, the repatriation was made with the support from the Romanian embassies in Damascus, Ankara, the Consulate General of Romania in Istanbul and the honorary consul of Romania in Iskenderun.

Fires have eaten through roughly 0.6 percent of Europe's Mediterranean forests each year from 2009 to 2018, a recent report from six country offices of global conservation group World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has shown, warning that fires are increasing in frequency and virulence.