As Britain’s economic recovery gains strength, lending to small businesses has gone up considerably over the last year.
In just the last three months, 60% of loan applications were approved. A year ago, the figure was 45%.
Four men have been arrested on suspicion of running a scam that netted at least €2.1 million by stealing from many of Portugal's councils, hospitals and state services.
The Judicial Police today detained three Portuguese and one foreigner aged between 22 and 37.
British consumers are reaping the delights of lower petrol prices and higher wages by spending in shops, cinemas and restaurants.
Stronger sterling has encouraged more people to make holiday plans.
Beer drinkers in the UK are increasingly opting for beer with lower levels of alcohol.
According to the Department of Health, between 2011 and 2013 the number of units of alcohol sold went down by 1.9 billion.
Low wages and the deterioration of working conditions in the National Health Service are driving Portugal’s medical professionals to the private sector, both here and abroad.
Anesthetists, radiologists, general surgeons, orthopedic surgeons, gynecologists, ophthalmologists, clinical pathologists and pediatricians are the principal specialists sorely lacking in Portugal’s National Health Service.
Jerónimo de Sousa, the General Secretary of the Portuguese Communist Party, has accused Portugal’s President of not being up to the job.
Additonally, de Sousa has called for the resignation of the government over the failure by its leader, Pedro Passos Coelho, to come up with any plausible excuses for his past reluctance to pay his social security account.
The business association ACRAL has hit out at the scale of the IKEA project planned for a site on the Loulé-Faro border and wants to explain to the public the affects the development will have on local trade.
According to Victor Guerreiro, the ACRAL president, despite what has been said in the media about the Algarve’s IKEA project, "the local population remains unaware of the real scale of what is to be built at the Faro airport junction of the Via do Infante."
On the plus side, the albino python is the first to have been discovered in Albufeira but at two metres long the live reptile has caused concern to residents and to the authorities who have no clue as to how the snake ended up in a council waste bin.
A resident of Salgados, Albufeira, found the live Albino Burmese Python in the bin and sensibly contacted the GNR whose officers admitted they were “surprised by its size.”
