A toker's dream washed up on the beach at Vila Real de Santo António on Monday as a package containing 20 blocs of hashish was spotted by an early moring walker and reported to the police.

The former Secretary of State for Transport and Communications, Sérgio Monteiro, is to be hired by the Resolution Fund to front a new sale process for Novo Banco.

Monteiro’s hiring results from a need expressed by the Bank of Portugal and Novo Banco to have someone exclusively running the sale, as those who had been in charge ‘have other functions in regulating the financial sector.’

The government has altered the agreement for the sale of state airline TAP including a clause that, if triggered, forces the taxpayer again to underwrite losses if the airline continues to be run at a loss.

The banks exposed to TAP are BCP, Deutsche Bank, BIC, CGD and BPI, which petitioned for a new lending guarantee clause. The government agreed in order to unblock negotiations.

State standards authority ASAE says its officers have been cleaning up Portugal’s wine sector with 221 criminal cases pursued in the last decade

Food Safety and Economic Authority inspectors have checked 3,800 wine businesses, seized 7.4 million litres of wine and filed 221 criminal cases in the wine industry.

A delighted Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs, Paulo Núncio, said today that the recovery of monies owed to the Tax Authority had surpassed €1 billion as at October 25th.

This is the highest figure since 2009 with 75% of the money coming from the corporate sector where business owners had fallen behind on VAT and company taxes, many cases will have been for non-payment advanced corporation tax on assumed, but non-existent, profits.

The UK has catapulted itself into the top position within the G7 as the best country for doing business.

It ranked as sixth easiest in the world for starting and running business, rising two spots in the last year, and overtaking the United States, the world’s largest economy.

Britain is enjoying a boom in household income, a welcome change from the long and dreary years of the Great Recession.

Disposable income for households has finally managed to creep up beyond the high before the 2008 crash for those in retirement.

The European Parliament has voted to end agricultural subsidies being used to support bullfighting in Spain.

The subsidies are worth more than €140 million a year.