The top 50 fastest-growing tech companies in the UK generated more than £963 million in total annual revenues in the last year, according to Deloitte.

Diverse aspects of technology are represented in the top 50.

The Algarve’s nurses went on strike today with Faro, Lagos and Portimão hospitals badly affected with only urgent surgery being performed in Faro.

The overall strike rate was 65% according to the union representative who said the action was all to do with staffing levels.

The Catalan president has been charged by Spain’s attorney general after the unofficial referendum on independence.

Artur Mas has been charged with disobedience, perverting the course of justice, misuse of public funds and abuse of power.

Argentina has decreed that all public transport vehicles and stations display signs proclaiming “The Falklands are Argentine”.

Naturally, the signs are to call the islands Las Malvinas.

Portugal's Deputy Prime Minister, Paulo Portas, spent an uncomfortable afternoon in Parliament trying his best to answer questions about his failed Golden Visa project which has seen many already wealthy property owners shift their houses, and an elite cadre of public servants enrich themselves in the process.

Portas claimed that the Golden Visa scheme is not a huge money laundering operation and that he certainly was not going to resign over the furore created by last week’s arrests and resignations, including that of Miguel Macedo, the Minister for Internal Affairs.

A Deloitte study for the Portuguese Association of Energy has concluded that prices for electricity in the liberalised market are 3% lower than the in the regulated market with consumers having saved around €40 million in 2013.

In its analysis Deloitte concludes that ‘in 2013 the average price per megawatt hour in the free market was €6.9 lower than in the regulated market, which translates into a savings of approximately € 40 million to consumers in the domestic segment.’

The number of deaths from terrorism rose by an alarming 44% in 2013, with Iraq being the country most affected.

During the year there were nearly 10,000 terrorist attacks from which nearly 18,000 people died. Of these 6,362 people in Iraq were killed.

AMAL, the mayors’ group that likes to get together regularly and then make pronouncements, has done just that and professes it solidarity with the current mayor of Portimão, Isilda Gomes, because it says there is a strong possibility that the municipality will "be forced to close its doors."

Gomes’ latest problem is over insurance as she authorised a three year deal for €670,000 to cover the council’s buildings, vehicles and personal injury insurances but had not run it past the Court of Auditors.