A 43-year-old man was arrested just after he set fire to a wooded area in Betunes near Loulé on Saturday morning.

A GNR patrol spotted the fire and immediately went to see what was going on.

French president Hollande pledged on Saturday to “completely dismantle” the notorious Jungle encampment in Calais.

"There will be no camps in France," Hollande said.

Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble dismissed comments made by British foreign minister Boris Johnson who on Thursday had called some of the EU’s guiding principles “absolute baloney”.

Johnson told reporters that there was no “automatic trade-off” between free movement and access to the single market.

The Central Department of Investigation and Penal Action (DCIAP) formally has opened an inquiry into years of endemic maladministration at Caixa Geral de Depósitos and is going through the dodgy loan book so ascertain which had not been granted in accordance with banking rules.

A letter has been sent by the office of the Attorney General to the parliamentary committee of inquiry that already is looking into the State bank’s previous management and the massive bad loan provisions that already have been made.

The Association of Commerce and Services in the Algarve Services (ACRAL) has submitted a plan for a Compensation Fund for Local Trade to fund a ‘buy local’ advertising campaign.

The money would come from local councils and then would be spent on combating the likely negative effects on local trade by the opening next spring of the IKEA store near Loulé.

The IMF mission chief for Portugal says it is too late for the government to take any action that would correct the looming deficit for the year end.

Helpfully suggesting that the focus should be on 2017, Subir Lall describes a Portuguese government that has failed to reduce its spend and has not made up the ground from increased tax volumes.

Visitors to Britain splashed the cash in July, spending just about £1.8 billion.

The Office for National Statistics said the spending spree was from both tourists and those on business trips. It was a hike of 2% over that spent in July 2015.

A 19-year-old on a bicycle has been hit and killed by a train on the Algarve's regional railway line today at around 1pm.

The incident occurred at a level crossing just to the west of Faro where, according to witnesses, the barriers were down but the man went around them in order to cycle across the track.