LISBON: US pop star Madonna has moved to Lisbon so her 11-year-old son David can join the youth academy at top football club Benfica, local media reported Thursday.
“Madonna is no longer a tourist, she now lives in Lisbon,” the weekly magazine Visao said, republishing several pictures taken from her Instagram account of the 59-year-old singer visiting Portugal over the last couple of months.
Madonna has been staying in a Lisbon hotel after buying a house in the bucolic village of Sintra, 30 kilometers northwest of the Portuguese capital.
The 19th century building was put up for sale for 7.5 million euros ($9 million) and could take about six months to renovate, according to Visao.
David Banda, who Madonna adopted from Malawi in 2006, has joined the Benfica training center in the Lisbon suburb of Seixal, Correio da Manha reported.
The club accepted the boy after his first test in the spring and he will stay at the academy until he starts the school year at a French high school in Lisbon, Correio da Manha said, citing a source close to Benfica.
Rumours about a possible move began when Madonna was spotted at the school in May.
Banda is one of four children Madonna has adopted from Malawi after she adopted twin girls in February. She has also has two biological children.
Madonna is not the first international celebrity to move, or have a second home, in the Portuguese capital. Movie stars John Malkovich, Monica Bellucci and Michael Fassbender have all had homes in Lisbon.
Madonna moves to Lisbon to help son David become a football star
Madonna moves to Lisbon to help son David become a football star
Parrots rescued as landslide-hit Sicilian town saves pets
- Residents queued up at a fire service command point just outside the high-risk, evacuated “red zone” to be accompanied inside to rescue pets
- Some locals feed their animals but leave them where they are, because they have no place to take them
NISCEMI, Italy: Pino Terzo Di Dio was in tears as firefighters carried his beloved parrots out of his home, which has been cordoned off as his town teeters on a cliff edge.
They were the latest pets to be saved by firefighters from hundreds of homes that were evacuated in the Sicilian town of Niscemi after a four-kilometer (2.5-mile) long stretch of hillside collapsed.
“They are scared,” Di Dio told AFP, his voice breaking as the emergency workers carried the parrots — four cockatiels and a parakeet — out of his house in two cages, buffeted by the wind.
The town, built on unstable terrain, was battered by a powerful storm which hit southern Italy last week.
There were no deaths or injuries from Sunday’s landslide, but experts say the gulf could extend when it rains again.
- ‘Lost everything’ -
Residents queued up at a fire service command point just outside the high-risk, evacuated “red zone” to be accompanied inside to rescue pets or gather belongings from important documents to clean underwear.
Some locals feed their animals but leave them where they are, because they have no place to take them.
Di Dio said his bird feeders were full but one of the parrots “tends to knock the water onto the floor,” and feared they may have been without water for days.
The 53-year-old said he had been moving between friends’ houses since the disaster.
“It’s been four days that I’ve barely washed. I smell like a goat, but that’s fine,” he said.
All his attention was on the yellow and grey birds, aged between seven and 13, and where they will go now.
“Let’s hope that someone with a kind heart will take care of them. The important thing is that they treat them well,” he said.
“I don’t have a home, I’ve lost everything.”
- ‘Help us’ -
Firefighter Franco Turco said emergency workers had rescued “quite a few dogs, cats — and now parrots.”
The team was working out how to rescue horses in fields below the baroque town, where deep fissures caused by the landslide were complicating access.
In the meantime, some 24 firefighters have carried out 80 missions to recover belongings in the red zone, which extends 150 meters from the cliff face.
But not even they enter the 50 meters buffer zone before the edge.
Some residents “have cried, have hugged us,” he said.
In the same building as Di Dio’s parrots, a woman who did not want to be named pulled a shopping trolley and black plastic bags full of belongings out of the house and onto the street.
In her arms she carried a ceramic statue of the Madonna, which had once stood at the foot of her stairs.
“May the Madonna help us,” she said.
