Banco Comercial Português (BCP Millennium) was the only one of three Portuguese banks examined that failed the latest stress tests conducted by the European Central Bank and the European Banking Authority.
Caixa Geral de Depósitos and Banco Português Investimento passed the tests.
Despite Portugal’s insistence that it discovered much of the unknown world during the period called The Discoveries, it has puzzled many visitors to the Algarve that there is no appropriate museum, display or information centre to let the public know of these achievements.
At last an entrepreneur has taken it upon himself to fill the gap left by successive councils and ministries by setting up a series of waxwork displays to explain the important role that Portugal’s explorers, mercenaries and traders played in opening and maintaining trade links with Africa, India and the Far East.
Faro court ordered probation for four of the five men who had been arrested for acquiring large sums of money withdrawn from banks by business customers who were followed and later robbed.
The group’s members are from Lisbon and Setúbal but were nabbed in Gondomar and hauled down to Faro after a long operation during which the GNR managed to identify the men, largely due to their particular modus operandi.
Faro council has made a further 73 car parking spaces free to use, but Tavira has gone one better.
The goal of the Faro measure, unsurprisingly, is "to improve the parking in the city centre" starting in the middle of November on the Avenida Eng Joaquim Lopes Belchior off the Largo de São Francisco.
A Portuguese emigrant to the US has been arrested in New Jersey and charged of having had an instrumental role in a money laundering scheme for the local mafia.
Abel Rodrigues from the Minho region in northern Portugal was charged with money laundering, operating an unlicensed cheque-cashing facility and fiddling his tax returns.
HMRC has been paying people for giving them leads to tax dodgers.
Roughly 265 people each day are providing the authorities with information about people they suspect could be avoiding tax, such as former partners and bosses as well as colleagues and neighbours.
Jobs in Britain’s manufacturing sector have been slashed by an average of 60% since 1979.
Back then, manufacturing accounted for 25% of all jobs in Britain, but today the figure stands at merely 8%.
The creation of the clothes retailer Zara has catapulted its founder, Amancio Ortega, into becoming the third wealthiest man in the world.
Zara opened its first doors in 1975 in A Coruna in northern Spain. Originally Ortega and his business partner Rosalia Mera wanted to call the shop Zorba after the film, but a bar down the street had already bagged the name, so they opted for Zara instead.
