In the same week that Faro’s mayor announced a €1 million spend on new animal shelter and care facilities, a retired British businessman has launched Animal Rescue Algarve to provide a temporary home for up to 600 abandoned and ill-treated animals in the Algarve.

Sidney Richardson, resident in Portugal for 25 years, made his money in property and insurance and has decided to spend a significant amount of it on setting up the new association and paying for the building of new facilities in the central Algarve.

Events that continue to defy logic, efficiency and rational planning continue apace for the EN125 eastern section where the contract for the road’s long awaited upgrade has been refused by the Court of Auditors.

Approval of the EN125 upgrade was dependent on a green light from the Court of Auditors after reviewing the contract signed between Infraestructuras de Portugal and the concession holder, Rotas do Algarve Litoral.

Norsudtimber is Congo's main timber extraction and export company but, according to international NGO Global Witness, logging on 90% of its concession areas is illegal.

Norsudtimber controls more than 40,000 square kilometres of tropical forest, the size of Switzerland. The company, based in the ‘no questions asked’ tax haven of Liechtenstein, is run by three Luso-Angolan brothers - José Albano, João Manuel and Alberto Pedro Maia Trindade.

Energy expert, Pedro Sampaio Nunes, told the committee of inquiry into EDP’s consumer subsidy racket that the company should return €3 billion that is has received from customers under the contractual equilibrium scheme (CMEC) since 2007.

In a hearing on the commission of inquiry into excessive energy payments to the former State-owned company, Pedro Sampaio Nunes said it was "a scandal" that EDP, "with phenomenal profits, receives State aid by raising tariffs to consumers."

The Institute of Nature Conservation reveals that last year so many eucalyptus trees were planted in Portugal that the species now covers more than 80% of Portugal’s forest land.

This is the entirely predictable result of the government being persuaded influenced by the powerful pulp industry lobby.

Portugal’s State-controlled infrastructure company has been fined by the GNR for failing to clear the trees, weeds and scrub alongside the IP3 road in Viseu, as required by the new fire safety laws.

The mayor of Viseu today accused the government of issuing plenty of propaganda but doing little actual work and said that in the coming weeks he will put teams on the ground to fulfill the State’s obligations, followed up by an invoice for the work done.

With a start date of June 29 and lasting until tourist numbers have dwindled in early September, the GNR is intensifying its traffic policing activities, in Operation Hermes.

Under the laudable initiative of patrolling, supervision and giving support to road users, the GNR’s stated objective is to ensure road users’ safety during the holiday months, especially at popular resorts and at summertime events. When it comes to fines, expect no mercy.

A Lagoa resident, who killed stabbed his boyfriend to death and partially buried the body, has been handed a 24-year prison sentence from judges in Portimão court.

The 31-year-old man was found guilty of murder, theft and document forgery.