Portugal’s globe-trotting Economy Minister, António Pires de Lima, started an exhaustive roadshow today in New York on a mission to attract investment and pitch Portugal as "a privileged place” in which to do business.

"The goal at this point is fundamentally to explain the extraordinary progress that Portugal has made in its adjustment programme. Let's finish this bailout process in June 2014 and highlight what we can offer to different types of investors which can consider Portugal as a privileged space for investment, not only as we are in Europe, but also Portugal acts as a gateway to many African countries," said Pires de Lima in New York on the first leg of his US mission.

Water reaching one fifth of the Portuguese population is controlled by Spanish or Chinese companies. The Government does not agree with these municipal agreements as it messes up its plan to privatise Portugal’s water supply industry.

More than 2.3 million people in Portugal get their water from Spanish or Chinese suppliers and 1.3 million people are supplied by water whose distribution is carried out by companies where most of the capital is foreign.

Silves Camera already is drawing up plans to attack insects and prevent new pests from ruining many holidays as happened this summer in Armação de Pêra as an squadrons of mosquitoes attacked tourists and locals alike in an indiscriminate raids across from their marshy breeding grounds.

The Algarve municipality does not want a recurrence and the new mayor of Silves, Rosa Palma, is already taking steps to ensure that the technicians from the Regional Health Administration and from the Portuguese Environment Agency are in tune and on time with help and opinions as to what went wrong this summer and how to stop it happening again.

Somehow, the decrepit commercial port at Faro will end 2013 having exported 400,000 tons of cargo, its best performance this century as regional produce sails effortlessly into overseas markets.

The main export is from the Cimpor factory near Boliquieme where cement ends up in Algeria, North Africa and Cape Verde, but there is an increasing trade in stone, metalwork and tiles, mostly going to Gibraltar.

Eight people were injured this weekend, four seriously, after two separate collisions on the EN 125 according to the GNR's Faro District Command.

Two vehicles were involved in a crash near Benfarras, Boliqueime which blocked the road as firefighters extracted two victims who were in a seriously bad state.

In a disparaging speech, the head of Turismo de Portugal has criticised the large mish-mash of regional bodies that try to promote tourism, and the fact the Portugal still is not a coherent brand.

The number of regional bodies is high, given the size of the country, according to of Louis Matoso, the national tourism boss who admitted that regional slants in national initiatives are useful but the whole system really does need sorting out.

Four youngsters between 16 and 20 years old have been caught red-handed by the police in Tavira early on Friday morning as they sprayed graffiti on public and private buildings.

Police seized ‘various objects’ being used by the suspects in pursuit of their anti-social activities, including several spray cans.

After nearly a year the six screen cinema at the Continent Portimão shopping centre reopened last week as a brand new Cineplace.

The new operator Orient Group have taken on 12 people.

The Portimão cinema had been closed since January this year following the insolvency of Socorama Castello-Lopes which operated other cinemas nationally including the multiplex at Algarve Shopping in Guia which managed to reopen in August.