Lloyds Banking Group has realised its greatest annual profit in a decade.

Before tax, profits for 2016 were reported to be £4.24 billion, a leap of 158%.

Portugal has been lent on to withdraw its complaint to Europe over Spain’s expansion of a creaking nuclear power station near the border - both countries have been to sort the matter out between themselves.

In a cover-up approved by Jean-Claude Juncker, Spain’s government has invited a group of Portuguese engineers to visit the Almaraz plant on the river Tagus, to show how safe and well-maintained it is.

Environmental association Almargem has delivered the strongest argument yet to the Algarve’s regional environmental water authorities to halt the burial of Lagoa’s ‘Lagoas Brancas’ wildlife haven under metres of rubble and earth in preparation for the expansion of industrial units and a supermarket.

As well as sending a provisional list of the now-threatened wildlife, Almargem points out that the original development permission has lapsed, in fact it ran out 18 months ago and the building company, AGII Atlantic, should not be carrying out any work at all.

An exploratory borehole, first scheduled to be sunk in 2016 has been pushed back to 2018, according to Galp Oil’s chief executive, Thore Kristiansen.

On January 26th, environmental organisation ASMAA discovered that the Direção-Geral de Recursos Naturais, Segurança e Serviços Marítimos (DGRM) has signed a licence for the Galp-ENI consortium on January 11, 2017 to drill in the Alentejo Basin.

The French battle against bird flu virus will see an additional 600,000 ducks culled.

All of the ducks on farms in the Landes department of south-west France close to the Spanish border are to be killed, according to the country’s agriculture minister.

Public money was used to pay the lawyers advising António Domingues, the short-lived president of Caixa Geral de Depósitos, as they worked on legal amendments to the laws applicable to the appointment of managers of State-controlled public companies.

Domingues was negotiating a vastly increased salary and bonus scheme as a condition of a grateful nation employing his services, but he also wanted an exemption from having to lodge his income and asset statements at the Court of Auditors, a normal requirement for any manager of a State-owned business.

The US vulture fund, Lone Star, now is in ‘exclusive negotiations’ with the Bank of Portugal to buy Novo Banco, is confident about the future of the loss-making business and optimistic about the Portuguese economy.

Olivier Brahin, chairman of Lone Star Europe, said he is committed to reaching an agreement with the Bank of Portugal to support Novo Banco in a way that will benefit "its customers, employees, creditors and the Portuguese economy in general."

The number of people taking advantage of Portugal’s various generous tax incentives has risen 44% in a year, including many retirees qualifying for zero tax on their incomes and young people applying for non-habitual resident status.

In just one year, the number of foreigners granted non-resident status increased from 7,414 in 2015 to 10,684 at the end of 2016.