The president of the Algarve's regional Socialist Party, António Eusébio, has expressed his deep concern about the government’s management of the Algarve's health service which he classes as being in "complete disarray."
"The instability that we have seen in the last year in the Regional Health Administration of the Algarve does not augur well," according to Eusébio in a statement issued today which will ring true with user groups across the region.
Sérgio Silva Monteiro, Secretary of State for Transport, now has the long-awaited figures he needs on the current value of TAP, the Portuguese nation's airline, not that he is letting us know the amount.
Monteiro has the report from his ‘experts’ but still will not commit to a date to re-launch the privatisation of the airline despite the availability of willing buyers.
The German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said today after a meeting in the Algarve with his Portuguese counterpart, Maria Luís Albuquerque, that Portugal took the "right decision" to forego the final tranche of the Troika loan.
This is a somewhat different statement to that from the German government in Berlin which on hearing the news of Portugal’s inability to get a budget past the Constitutional Court, and hence its inability to draw down the final tranche of the bailout loan, expressed “deep concern that the programme has ended in this way and that it shows a loss of determination on the part of the Portuguese Government to continue and conclude the bailout programme.”
Inflation in the eurozone was down to 0.5% in May 2014, dropping from 0.7% in April.
A year earlier inflation stood at 1.4%.
A reported slowdown in the UK housing market has now extended from London and into the regions.
Property prices during the month of June have cooled, helped by the increased number of people who have put their houses o the market hoping to cash in on the recent boom.
Eight people have been arrested on suspicion of recruiting fighters for the militant group ISIS which is waging war in Iraq.
The cell had helped to send recruits through to the Middle East where they would join Isis, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
“The main leader of this [recruitment] cell lived in Spain after having spent time at the [US detention centre] in Guantánamo, having been arrested in Afghanistan in 2001,” the statement read.
A fire in countryside next to the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve at Escampadinho in the parish of Mexilhoeira Grande, Portimão was finally put out at 07.00 on Monday morning after a night of concern and effort from firefighters.
The blaze started at 17.20 on a Sunday afternoon that saw temperatures in the mid to high 30s, and was tackled by 200 firefighters backed by 52 vehicles at the fire's peak.
The decline is due to another fall in the birth rate and the increasing number of Portuguese emigrating, according to the Estimates of Resident Population in Portugal report released today by the National Statistics Institute (INE).
In 2013 the resident population in Portugal was estimated at 10,427,301 people (4,958,020 men and 5,469,281 women) - a decrease in the resident population of 59,988 inhabitants since 2012.
