Following the announcement by Swiss and US investigators of criminal proceedings against FIFA for alleged money laundering in connection with the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and allegations of “systematic” corruption in the United States and Latin America, Transparency International has said Sepp Blatter must now stand down and upcoming presidential elections suspended.

In a statement, Cobus de Swardt, Managing Director of Transparency International said:

A number of top Fifa officials have been arrested in Zurich on corruption charges brought by the United States Justice Department.

More than a dozen Swiss policemen swept into the five star Baur au Lac hotel in the early hours of the morning, where several officials were believed to be staying ahead of this week's Fifa Congress meeting.

The Nogueira Group, which paid €26 million for the insolvent AliSuper chain of convenience stores in 2012, is selling off 18 of its shops, the first nine are going to Intermarché for €5 million.

Negotiations are continuing for further store sales with interest from the Jerónimo Martins Group, owner of Pingo Doce.

A report from the Consumer Protection Association, Deco, today said what most water customers already know, water tariffs in Portugal are "incoherent" and "continue to be guided by inequality."

According to Deco, "from north to south and from the coast to the interior, tariffs continue to be guided by inequality."

The Inspector General of Finance has confirmed that there was indeed a VIP Taxpayers list and calls for some sort of disciplinary action to be taken against those officials involved in drawing up the list whose existence was denied at senior level until uncovered by media investigation.

The Inspector Generral's report concluded that within the treasury there indeed was a system to monitor and protect access to the data of various big-wigs, using an "unfounded, arbitrary and discriminatory" scheme.

The executive director of the Portuguese Association of Resorts said today that delays in the Golden Visa application process, apparent since November last year, has led to a loss of foreign investment of €185 million.

"We are very concerned about the delays that have been occurring since about November. From the data that we have seen, up to November there were about 150 Golden Visa being issued each month on average ... and the average in the five months subsequent to November has fallen by half," according to Pedro Fontainhas, director of the association.

Internet use is expected to be available to half of the world’s population by the end of this year.

Some 3.2 billion people predicted to be online, out of the world population of 7.2 billion. About 2 billion of these will be in parts of the developing world.

Amazon could be changing its stripes by altering the way it records sales.

The move appears to come during the course of a formal EU investigation, opened last year, to consider the tax arrangements between Amazon and Luxembourg.