The business association ACRAL has hit out at the scale of the IKEA project planned for a site on the Loulé-Faro border and wants to explain to the public the affects the development will have on local trade.

According to Victor Guerreiro, the ACRAL president, despite what has been said in the media about the Algarve’s IKEA project, "the local population remains unaware of the real scale of what is to be built at the Faro airport junction of the Via do Infante."

On the plus side, the albino python is the first to have been discovered in Albufeira but at two metres long the live reptile has caused concern to residents and to the authorities who have no clue as to how the snake ended up in a  council waste bin.

A resident of Salgados, Albufeira, found the live Albino Burmese Python in the bin and sensibly contacted the GNR whose officers admitted they were “surprised by its size.”

As calls increase in volume for his resignation, the Prime Minsiter Pedro Passos Coelho tried again today to explain away his failure to pay his social security debts by saying he had been distracted and 'did not have enough money.'

The Prime Minister admits his errors, but said that he never got any special treatment and that he never failed to pay off the amounts owed to the social security department.

Portugal's Finance Minister, Maria Luís Albuquerque, has hit out at the country's unerring ability to repeat the mistakes of the past with three adjustment programmes in less than four decades.

Speaking at the closing session of the "Future of Portugal" conference, the Minister argued that "the importance of continuing the adjustment programme is evident," despite the economic recovery, as the public and private debt levels are still high and that "potential for further reform is still great," advocating "responsibility" in the management of public accounts.

Polish authorities are appealing to its workers in Britain to return home.

As many as 679,000 Poles are living in the UK, many having arrived when Poland joined the EU in 2004.

The gender gap in salaries in the EU stood at an average of 16% difference between wages for men and for women in 2013.

This ranged from less than 5% in Slovenia to more than 20% in Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany.

Spain has pushed both France and Italy out of the way and has become the world’s largest exporter of wine in 2014.

It sent 22.8 million hectolitres abroad last year. But despite this 22% increase, profits fell by 2.2%.

The sale of 50,000 residential tourism units in Portugal would represent a turnover of more than €10 billion, with €500 million received in direct taxes, according to a study released today.

"Impact on the Portuguese Economy of each new Foreign Resident," developed by the Portuguese Association of Resorts (APR), in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers concluded that sale of 50,000 properties also could represent 120,000 new jobs per year.