Portugal’s Minister of the Sea, Ana Paula Vitorino, will used EU’s ‘Our Ocean 2017’ conference to announce new commitments in the sustainable management of the oceans and to "significantly increase funding for deep-sea scientific research, including studies on the environmental impacts of seabed mining."
 
The conference in Malta on 5 and 6 October, brings together representatives from 61 countries who have been set the noble challenge of devising a system of global governance of the oceans, but Portugal wants license income from deep-sea mining, despite the minister's talk of a clean, blue and environmentally friendly ocean economy.

After a six-year absence, deVere Group is to “shake-up” its western European operations by returning to Portugal.

The financial services company has opened a new office in Tavira, six years since the company’s Algarve and Lisbon offices were closed and clients were passed to advisers across the border in Spain.

Approvals from the European Commission and the European Central Bank is needed before the ownership of Novo Banco can be transferred to Nani Holdings,* a company set up by US vulture fund Lone Star fund.

The sale is almost complete, but for these two approvals which will depend on EU rules on state aid and a restructuring plan that Lone Star has presented to ensure Novo Banco’s long-term viability.

The bankruptcy of Monarch Airlines has caused the cancellation of many group bookings at Algarve hotels during the winter season.

With the country’s tourism chiefs and government expecting a record 20 million overnight stays this year, the Monarch collapse and the Ryanair cancellations will affect the numbers, whatever the optimists are saying.

Four hundred kilos of high quality cocaine, which the police estimates as having a street value of around €20 million, were found aboard a yacht from the Caribbean and seized in the early hours of Saturday, September 30th.

The two crew members, an Italian and a Montenegran national, were detained and the yacht and illegal cargo were brought to Portimão docks.

A subsea cable between Sines, on Portugal’s west coast, and Santos in Fortaleza, Brazil, is to be laid with a commissioning date set for sometime in 2019.

The €170 million investment by Ellalink, owned by Brazilian and Spanish investors, will have a European base in the ZILS Business Centre in Sines.

An estimated 300,000 Catalans have observed a general strike today, October 3rd, to condemn Sunday's police violence at a banned referendum on independence. The government in Madrid has come under international pressure to resolve its worst political crisis in decades with Mariano Rajoy sticking to his opinion that the Catalan vote was illegal and that the police used 'proportionate force.'

A crowd several thousand strong gathered in front of the Popular Party headquarters in Barcelona chanting "Occupiers Out!" – in Catalan, obviously, with protests taking place outside Cuidadanos party offices across the region.

The Secretary of State for Tourism, Ana Mendes Godinho, says it is not just Portugal that offers tax benefits to foreigners.

Asked in Paris about comments by Finance Minister, Mário Centeno, who is working towards scrapping tax benefits for incoming foreigners, Ana Mendes Godinho commented, "My one and only message is: there are many countries that have regime identical to that of Portugal. Portugal is not a unique case."