The Bank of Portugal's governor, Carols Costa, (pictured) today announced the sale of 75% of Novo Banco to the US vulture fund, Lone Star, thus ending a process started in August 2014 when he created the ‘good bank’ as a resolution to the Banco Espírito Santo collapse.

Costa said that "the sale is another important step in stabilising the financial system." The sale also plays a big part in helping to asses the overall loss to the State from the original €4.9 billion bail-out subsided by taxpayers’ funds.

The government has passed an edict that, in theory, makes it easier for consumers to change their gas and electricity suppliers.

Diário da República has published details of the legal regime that give the energy agency, ADENE, the responsibility for ensuring that all consumer rights are respected when people want to make the change.

Borders Police at Faro airport have been on the ball with four travellers arrested carrying false documents.

The Aliens and Borders Service (SEF) announced that its officers arrested four foreign nationals, trying variously to board flights to England, Scotland and Ireland.

Monchique council is continuing its support for the local 'medronho economy' by putting on a two day Medronho Festival starting on April 1st.

Mayor, Rui André said, medronho, the local spirit made from the fruit of the strawberry tree, is one of the rural council's local products that is included in a strategy to produce 'quality, not quantity.'

In a move that could be construed as in indecent haste, Portugal’s government has set up a task force to ‘lure investment away from Britain’ following the British public’s desire to leave the European Union.

In the swirl of Brexit fog that surrounds every news item and opinion on what will happen, when and to whom, the Portuguese have decided to that many companies in the UK are pondering a shift of jobs and investment to continental Europe, and that many apparently are “thinking that London risks damaging its status as Europe's biggest financial centre after Britain formally began its divorce from the European Union on Wednesday.”

As rumours swirl across social media that the Repsol-Partex offshore southern Algarve oil exploration contracts have been cancelled, the top man at Galp says he is in nor great rush to start drilling off the west coast in the Santola bloc off Aljezur.

Gomes da Silva said his Galp-ENI consortium is ready to start and, with the April-June good weather window approaching, management is waiting to get approval of the documents submitted to the government for the final go-ahead.

The government has named the day for local council elections. Sunday, October 1st will see voters choose their councils.

The Minister of the Presidency, Maria Manuel Leitão Marques, made the announcement after Thursday’s meeting of the Council of Ministers to name the date “for holding the general elections for representative bodies of local authorities.”

The parliamentary group of the Left Bloc asked the government on Thursday for the report on the public consultation on the granting of the licence for the exploration and exploitation of oil in the Alentejo Basin.

The Santola concession, signed to the Galp-ENI oil consortium in 2007, covers an area off the coast of Aljezur and has triggered, like all the other concessions, fierce opposition from environmental groups, the general public and other bodies such as the mayors’ group AMAL.