Those parishes making up the municipality of Faro have launched an awareness campaign to reduce the amount of dog excrement being left in streets and public places countywide.
Each dog owner registering their pet, or renewing the obligatory annual dog licence, at any of Faro’s parish councils will receive a free gift - an attractive, blue, bone-shaped, poo-bag dispenser.
The Vila do Bipso municipality is becoming an archaeological hot spot after further evidence of the Roman occupation of the Algarve has been unearthed in Budens.
A two thousand year old Roman port has been revealed at Boca do Rio beach by a Portuguese-German team from the Universities of Algarve and Marburg.
A German tourist swimming off Fuseta-Mar beach, on the more dangerous ‘ocean side’ of Armona Island, was pulled from the water by lifeguards.
The 54-year-old’s wife realised he was in trouble and raised the alarm.
Storm damage has left the breakwater at Vila Real de Santo António in a poor state, especially the end section and contractors now have 3.5 months to carry extensive repairs before winter storms makes things worse.
The €500,000 spend will fix the existing breaks in the structure before further damage.
A team under Xavier Viegas's, from the Centre for Forest Fire Studies, has recorded cases where houses being rebuilt in the Pedrógão Grande area had not been damaged by fire, or clearly were ruins before the fire struck last June.
Viegas's team has surveyed about half of the properties that the Regional Development Commission had been told were in need of rebuilding grants.
Work to repair the Albarrã tower at Paderne Castle has been completed. The Minister of Culture paid a visit to mark the completion of the specialised reconstruction of the degraded tower made of taipa militar* that has stood up well to the ravages of the weather for eight centuries.
The work was to cost €132,000, supported by the local Council, the regional cultural directorate and the Millennium BCP Foundation, but came in under budget as a late decision was made to not repair the highest course of taipa.
"House prices continue to increase, but there is still no significant overvaluation," according to the latest IMF report, released on Thursday.
The International Monetary Fund report stresses that house price increases largely have been driven by non-residents buying property in Portugal, but agrees with the European Central Bank's assessment in May, that there were, "incipient signs of overvaluation in the residential market."
Portugal’s Socialist government knows full well that messing around with property taxes in order to penalise entrepreneurs, is a vote loser.
The Socialist Party leader today quashed any chance that the Left Bloc’s special income tax rate will see the light of day.
