Former Secretary of State for Tourism, Adolfo Mesquita Nunes, was chosen as ‘best public manager of the year’ in the third annual Amadeus Brighter Awards ceremony.

The former Secretary of State for Tourism was given the awarded for his innovation in the tourism sector, primarily for his work on digital marketing and developing new ways of promoting Portugal as a top tourism destination – it was not for his launch and the subsequent failure of the Alojamanto Local legislation.

Vila Real de Santo António council is to privatise the area’s water and sewage systems as it launches a tender process for a 30-year contract.

The municipality is seeking €47 million at current prices, updated according to inflation as the contract progresses.

The Algarve has trumped Prague having risen to the number one spot for the most affordable holiday destination for British tourists.

While prices fell by as much as 31% in more than half the 44 cities and resorts surveyed worldwide, in the Algarve the drop was recorded as 19% by the annual Post Office Travel Money report.

Greece has conceded that the IMF will play a part in its new rescue deal.

Greek finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos said his government was now committed to keeping the IMF on board.

The Financial Times has joined in the rising clamour surrounding the Bank of Portugal’s governor whose recent series of actions have caused international opprobrium, with overseas investors’ trust in Portugal at a depressing and avoidable low.

The recent stripping of investors of €2 billion in bonds held by Novo Banco has affected the principle of equal treatment of debtors, has left large institutions such as Pimco hundreds of millions out of pocket and has left another group of individuals without their life savings.

Spanish prosecutors have called for a 4.5 year prison sentence for the former head of the IMF.

Rodrigo Rato is one of 66 people caught in a scandal in which executives and board members at Caja Madrid and Bankia banks misappropriated money.

A drug trial in France commissioned by Portuguese pharmaceutical company Bial has left one man brain-dead and five others have been rushed to hospital.

The trials in Brittany involved six people tested with an oral medication being developed by a European laboratory in Rennes where the “serious accident” happened, according to French Health Minister, Marisol Touraine.

Portugal's Communist Party’s parliamentary group has submitted a draft resolution to parliament to get the EN125 into shape after years of deliberate neglect by the previous government.

The Communist MPs want the new Socialist Party government to adopt the necessary measures to ensure that the roadworks on the Algarve’s EN125 are completed quickly and demand that Infraestruturas de Portugal gets the job done after years of sodding about.