Inspections at beach areas in the Algarve have seen hospitality workers questioned and those without authorisation dealt with.

Inspectors working for the Aliens and Borders Service (SEF) have been snooping around hotels, shops and building sites along the Algarve's coastal resorts to nab those who are in the country, or working, illegally.

Of all the people spied on by the US government, 90% are said to have been ordinary internet users rather than foreign surveillance targets.

The claim was published in the Washington Post newspaper which said that innocent people were "caught in a net the National Security Agency had cast for somebody else".

Brits can expect “smart” energy meters to be installed in every house in the land.

The meters will cost households £200 each and energy companies have admitted the cost will be passed on to customers.

London buses have become part of the trend of a cash-free society.

Cash is no longer accepted on any of the capital’s 24,500 buses.

In an alternative state lottery, Portugal’s government has paid out over half a million euros to pensioners who had already died.
 
In many cases the deaths had been correctly recorded in the computer systems yet the payments continued as nobody had thought to suspend them.

Portugal’s tax department is €20 million a year out of pocket due to illegal property lettings to tourists.

If those property owners who rent their homes to tourists were to pay taxes, Portugal’s Inland Revenue would collect about €20 million a year according to early reports and projections using data collected by undercover inspectors who already are on the prowl.

Vítor Augusto Brinquete Bento, the current president of the ATM network company SIBS, is odds-on to become the new Chief Executive of troubled bank BES whose shares today rallied 8% on the news.

Bento, an economist and former government advisor, is a name that the Bank of Portugal has approved to run BES, a bank that is lurching from revelation to revelation in the dying days of Chief Executive Ricardo Salgado’s tenure.

In the BPN/Homeland fraud case, Pedro Lima’s lawyer has sought his client’ acquittal in the case and is highly critical that charges were brought in the first place.

Duarte Lima’s son, Pedro, is accused alongside his father and others in the Homeland case which relates to the acquisition of land in Oeiras with money withdrawn from BPN.