Dog walkers along the central Algarve’s beaches will be out earlier than usual, for a week at least, after Police spotted and hauled aboard a 30kg floating bale of hashish.

The well bagged and buoyant narcotic was spotted 7 kilometres off Albufeira.

A senior Portuguese minister has said his country's "golden visa" scheme is generating wide interest in the Middle East, with Arabs and South Asians among the most common applicants, writes The National.

Eurico Brilhante Dias, Portugal’s secretary of state for internationalisation, revealed that most applicants from the region come from Pakistan, followed by India and Egypt, including some living in the UAE.

A new motorhome route across the Algarve aims to attract further tourists to the interior of the region.

The €2.2 million project is developing 14 motorhome parks along the EN 124, with the support of In Loco and the Algarve’s mayors with EU funds.

Portugal’s Post Office company, CTT, has reported profits below €20 million for 2018 and has cut the dividend by 7’%.

The 28% slide in profits is blamed on the costs of restructuring.

Housing in Portugal has been under "great pressure" in recent years.

This is one of the problems identified in Portugal’s economy by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

There are three countries in Eastern Europe are worse off than Portugal when it comes to energy poverty, according to a European study that evaluated the ability of households to keep their homes at comfortable temperatures and pay the energy bills.

Using Eurostat data, the Coalition for the Right to Energy, to which Portugal's ZERO association belongs, concluded that there are 41 million households in the 28 European Union countries that can not be heated in winter and 91 million they can not be cooled in the summer.

A valuable 17th century Flemish painting is to exhibited at the Faro Municipal Museum, from February 19th at 6:00 p.m.

'The Tower of Babel' is the first exhibit on loan in the Algarve from Novo Banco.

One of the most important nature tourism events in the region starts in Aljezur on Friday and runs until Sunday, February 24, with the support of the Algarve region’s tourist board.

The challenge is to build a more sustainable future for the Algarve, a destination that in 2018, was host to 18.8 million overnight stays and more than 4.2 million guests in the region’s hotels.