Portugal’s food safety authority, ASAE, has issued a statement in the face of the European egg contamination scandal, saying today that the detection of contaminated eggs, purchased in Belgium by a Portuguese construction company, does not represent a risk at the moment, nor does it require any swift action as these eggs “may not even have reached Portugal.”

The reason Portugal has been included in a Europe-wide ban on egg shipments is that the Portuguese company was logged as buying the eggs in Belgium on August 19. The purchase was "transacted for a Portuguese company", but "probably, from the amount purchased, was by a person linked to a company" who bought "about a dozen" of the offending articles.

Portugal’s authorities have detained 128 people so far this year for setting light to forests.

The number of arrests is a welcome 75% increase over 2016, according to the National Civil Protection Authority.

The Algarve’s hotels were full this August, despite tales of doom and gloom that the Brits were staying away due to Brexit and, more importantly, the exchange rate between the euro and the pound.

The Algarve’s hotels’ association said that August 2017 showed a close to bursting 93.9% occupancy rate, the same as last year when the resurgence of tourism started to give the country the economic boost required to start lifting it out of economic gloom and despair.

The Culatra Island Residents' Association’s long-running complaint that the Culatra harbour entrance pontoon was tatty, increasingly dangerous and overdue for maintenance has at last been attended to - and in record time.

Ana Paula Vitorino, Minister of the Sea, visited the Ria Formosa island in July and work on the pontoon started at the end of August, taking just a week to complete.

The Bank of Portugal has confirmed that the handing over of Novo Banco will take place "within the deadlines foreseen" thus leaving open a completion date which has never been fixed.

The latest upset to the lengthy and fraught handover, with 75% of Novo Banco due to be given away to the notorious US vulture fund, Lone Star, is Banco Comercial Português which has filed a lawsuit over the call on its own funds to support Novo Banco should it's assets turn from gold to dust after the transfer.

"That’s it folks!" Austerity in Portugal is over, according to an upbeat Economy Minister.

Caldeira Cabral claims that Costa's government "ended austerity" and that Portugal will have its biggest growth rate this century, claiming the socialist administration has “freed the country from austerity’s corset.”

A clever new website has been launched that tracks Portuguese MPs’ voting and attendance records.

Hemicycle.pt enables the public and the press to see who has voted for what – and how this marries up with what MPs have said to their constituents.

Alcoutim council and telecoms supplier MEO have signed a deal, in which they undertake to "make efforts to increase fiber optic coverage throughout the Alcoutim municipality” to benefit locals, businesses and. Most importantly, the local council.

In a long-overdue effort to make the municipality “technologically more advanced,” MEO says it will try, wherever possible,  “to provide access to its conduit system so that the municipality can develop optical fiber connections to municipal buildings or other projects of public interest."