Eideard

Portugal’s parliament has passed a law to legalise same-sex marriage, but rejected proposals to allow homosexual couples to adopt.

The bill was approved with the support of the governing Socialist Party and other parties further to the left.

Prime Minister Jose Socrates opened the debate with an appeal to back the law, saying it would put right an injustice that had caused unnecessary pain…

The law has been fiercely opposed by conservatives in the Catholic country.

Friday’s debate was at times heated, says the BBC’s Alison Roberts in Lisbon, with Socialists attacking as discriminatory a counter-proposal from the centre-right Social Democrats for a new so-called civil union for same-sex couples…

If the law is ratified by President Anibal Cavaco Silva, it could come into effect in April – just a month before a visit to Portugal by Pope Benedict XVI, a staunch opponent of gay marriage.

The ratification would make Portugal the sixth country in Europe to allow same-sex marriages after Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Norway.

Many other countries have introduced civil partnerships, which give lesbian and gay couples some of the rights of married heterosexuals.

And then there’s the United States. I figure there will be full civil rights in the U.S. sometime in the decades after we regain the world lead in access to broadband – and win the World Cup.

I’m actually more confident about the World Cup.

“I will keep fighting”
Daylife/Reuters Pictures

A pregnant woman attends the Carnation revolution 35th anniversary in Lisbon April 25, 2009. Portugal celebrates on April 25 the Carnation Revolution coup, which put an end to 48 years of dictatorship in 1974.

Yes, during all those 48 years of the Salazar dictatorship, you could count on more or less nothing being done to oppose Fascist rule in Portugal by either Democrat or Republican-controlled governments in the United States.

No matter. The Portuguese people eventually ended up running their own land – as a democracy.

Traditional salt-making, hand harvesting
Daylife/AFP/Getty Images

In the early 1990s, João Navalho, a microbiologist fresh out of graduate school, came to the salt marshes in the Algarve region with a handful of young partners to grow and harvest microalgae. The business foundered…After years of frustrated effort, the partners suddenly changed course. “We looked around and said, ‘We’re stupid!”‘ Navalho recalled. “We have a lot of land here. What we should do with the salinas is produce salt!”…

Like everything else in this undertaking, the answer was staring them in the face. Living on the edge of the marshes was Maximino António Guerreiro, a sunburned retired salt worker with a grizzled beard and missing teeth, who started harvesting here with his father more than four decades ago.

In 1997, the salt project began. Guerreiro cleaned out and rebuilt the long-abandoned patchwork of rectangular, clay-lined salt beds. With young workers from Eastern Europe, he opened sluices from the sea and set up a damming system to control the water flow. He shared the secrets of salt: how to measure evaporation levels and determine the correct salt density and water temperature, when to add water and to rake and skim.

Two years later, Necton, the salt company that Navalho created here, produced its first salt crop. Now it is one of the region’s new salt pioneers, struggling to revive what was once a flourishing trade in this part of Portugal. They are trying to persuade consumers of the health and taste benefits of handmade, nonindustrial salt and to compete in an increasingly sophisticated global salt market. “Life begins in the ocean,” Navalho said. “What we are selling is ocean salt water without the water. Call it sea dust.”

To many people, salt is salt. But to those for whom it is a gourmet condiment, few varieties compare to the crème de la crème of salt known as fleur de sel, harvested by gently skimming the white, lacy film from the surface of salty beds when weather conditions in summer allow.

RTFA. Lots of interesting history. A fair piece of info about the craft.

I have a favorite sea salt – though I won’t bring it up since it has naught to do with the article. I think all the methods and styles have a place – just like all the denominations of olive oil or where your favorite scallops grow. The flavor is in the taste buds of the taster.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

In a diplomatic breakthrough that is likely to help the Obama administration close the Guantánamo detention camp, Portugal said this week that it was willing to resettle some detainees and urged other European countries to accept prisoners remaining at the camp, which has been a source of international criticism for nearly seven years.

“The time has come for the European Union to step forward,” Portugal’s foreign minister, Luís Amado, said in a letter to other European ministers released Thursday.

“We should send a clear signal of our willingness to help the U.S. government in that regard, namely through the resettlement of detainees,” the letter said.

Although there is no specific agreement yet on the transfer of detainees, Bush administration officials described the announcement as a critical step toward solving the problem that has been referred to as “Guantánamo’s hard cases.” That refers to some 60 of the remaining 250 detainees whom the Pentagon has cleared for release but who cannot be sent to their home countries, often out of concern that they would be tortured or persecuted. They are from countries including Algeria, China, Libya and Tunisia.

Separate from – the detainees the Bush government has deliberately shipped off to other nations to be tortured.

A Portuguese online bank has unveiled a novel interest rate deal by letting clients bet on the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.

Banco Best’s customers will be awarded interest on their 60-day deposits on the basis of whether they bet correctly on the winner of the November 4 U.S. election between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain.

If they pick the winner, they will be rewarded with interest of 8 percent, applied retroactively from November 4 to the day they opened the account. If their bet is wrong, they will get just 2 percent interest.

Banco Best will offer up to 10 million euros of the so-called McCain/Obama Deposit, which can be subscribed to online at any time until November 3.

American banking chains just say, “Show me the money.”

Jose Socrates and Craig Barrett

Microsoft has launched a software package for a Portuguese ultra-cheap laptop for school children that the government hopes will boost the country’s technological edge in education…

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled the software package called “Suite Magellan” to go with the laptops, which will include Windows XP and Office in addition to development applications, free email and instant messaging.

Portuguese Socialist Prime Minister Jose Socrates has made boosting poor education standards and technology at schools a priority of his government…

The government hopes the Magellan project, named after the 16th century Portuguese explorer, will raise computer access at schools to two students per computer by 2010, up from five now…

While the computer will be assembled in Portugal by a company called JP Sa Couto, it is based on Intel’s Classmate PC, a cheap computer that has been adopted in various formats in countries such as Brazil and Indonesia.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez signed an agreement to buy 1 million Magellan laptops for Venezuelan schools. The computers also went on public sale in Portugal last week for 285 euros ($394).

How can you go wrong expanding educational opportunities for the children of your nation?

Meanwhile, Microsoft keeps running down this blather about XP being an end-of-life product. At the same time, they treat it as a useful, portable package they can distribute worldwide. Cripes!

Venezuela is ordering one million low cost laptops for its school children. The machines will be based on the Intel Classmate laptop that has been designed for school children.

Venezuela is buying the portable computers as part of a $3bn (£1.66bn) bilateral trade deal with Portugal that also covers housing and utilities.

Portugal is manufacturing the laptops under licence from Intel and are broadly based on the chip maker’s design of its Classmate computer.

Dubbed Magellan, the laptops will have on board low-power Intel Atom chips designed for laptops. They will also sport digital cameras and a broadband net connection. As an operating system, the machines will run a version of Linux developed in Venezuela.

The trick here is that the Portuguese government got the license from Intel and set up manufacturing to supply these critters to their own school children. Looks like someone was smart enough to understand they might further defray expenses by building an excess for export.

How long before we see these in Best Buy?

Portugal’s Socialist government has begun the roll-out of 500,000 ultra-cheap laptops for school children in a programme that could be extended to Venezuela, the government said.

The computers called ‘Magellan’ after the 16th-century Portuguese explorer will use Intel processors and will be offered to schools at a subsidized price of 50 euros. The government hopes the Magellan will boost the computer literacy of school children aged 6 to 11.

Portugal has some of the lowest school achievement levels in western Europe and Prime Minister Jose Socrates has made boosting education a key priority. The government hopes the Magellan project will raise computer access at schools to two students per computer by 2010, up from five this year.

While the computer will be assembled in Portugal by a company called JP Sa Couto, it is based on Intel’s Classmate PC, a cheap computer that has been adopted in various formats in countries such as Brazil and Indonesia.

The computers will also go on public sale this week for 285 euros.