Portugal’s General Inspectorate of Finances has looked at the €187 million claim for compensation for the cancellation of the €11.6 billion high speed rail network and decided just 20% of the total applied for is justifiable.
The TGV pipe dream had been drifting around since 1988, finally was authorised by the José Sócrates government and promptly was cancelled by Passos Coelho in 2012 on cost/benefit grounds i.e. there was plenty of cost and no discernible benfit.
A head-on collision early on Monday morning has left three people dead as the summer toll mounts on the Algarve's EN125.
The accident happened at 07:30 near Patã - Boliqueime.
Before you ask, it is €505 a month and the percentage of workers on what many agree is barely enough to live on has risen by 73.6% between the Troika's arrival and the time its team left town.
The saddening figures are to be found deep within the latest bulletin from the Ministry of the Economy which reveals that the average monthly earnings for Portugal’s workers has fallen as many more get by on the minimum wage.
Plague has caused the closure of a campground in a popular nature reserve in California.
A pair of dead squirrels was found to be infected with the plague, leading authorities to shut the one of the camp sites, Tuolumne Meadows, at Yosemite National Park.
At long last, a study into the economic affect of the Via do Infante toll system.
The Faro socialists have not gone as far as calling for the lifting of tolls but say that the new technical study, conducted by a group of economists and professors at the University of the Algarve, show that a big reduction in toll rate will increase revenue.
Some good news at last for the golf industry as rounds played in the Algarve increased by just over 6% in the first half of 2015 to well over the magic 500,000, according to an announcement by the Associação de Turismo do Algarve.
The growth is entirely from overseas visitors and the 6% rise this year equates to an extra 34,600 rounds played taking the total to 602,000 rounds as tourism numbers increase across the various sectors.
New York City’s Guardian Angels have returned to combat a new wave of crime.
The crimebusters have been off duty for more than two decades, but they had been a common sight around Central Park which in the 1980s was a no-go area even in daylight hours.
Thousands of trees along the Canal du Midi in France are being felled because they have been infected.
Another 2,200 plane trees are due to be chopped down and burned on the spot. This will bring the total to more than 15,000 since the first trees were felled in 2006.
