Portugal's socialist party leader, António José Seguro (pictured), has asked the Prime Minister to clarify, once and for all, the mystery surrounding payments from Tecnoforma and his salary status at the time.

"The first reaction that Passos Coelho had was to say that Parliament should clarify the matter, it is now the prosecutor that should clarify it. The country requires clarification," said Seguro who believes that "it is easy to verify whether the prime minister received money or did not during the time he was an MP."

The Minister of Education Nuno Crato announced today that he had accepted the resignation of Mário Agostinho Alves Pereira, after admitting that errors in the placement of teachers this year came from within his ministry.

Pereira, Director General of School Administration since 2009, took the blame for the chaos by incorrectly applying a formula rather than by applying some common sense to the annual turmoil caused when teachers are allocated jobs in a system that causes the maximum disruption for the maximum number of teachers each year.

Portugal's government has agreed a deal to raise the national minimum wage for an estimated 500,000 workers to €505 a month as from October.

The action results from an agreement between the government, unions and associations of various sectors to lift the rate from just €484 a month.

In April next year the Algarve Tourist Board is to host and promote an "Algarve Nature Week" which aims to be a showcase for the nature tourism sector and the start of an anual promotional push.

The vice president of the regional board, João Fernandes, said that management were planning a week in which nature tourism businesses can promote themselves to regional, national and international markets.

The UK has pledged to provide more than £200m to work against the rapid loss of forests in poor countries.

The UK was supported by more than 30 other countries who signed the New York Declaration on Forests, a major UN initiative to stem the tide of climate change by cutting the rate of deforestation around the world in half by 2020.

The European Union has mounted its biggest crackdown on organised crime which resulted in more than 1,000 arrests.

All kinds of crimes came under the microscope, from drug and people trafficking to tax fraud and counterfeiting of goods and currency.

The economy of the eastern parts of Germany formerly under communist rule has still not caught up with that enjoyed by the west of the country.

GDP in the former east is still 30% lower than in the west, despite the demise of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and subsequent unification of the country.

The Secretary of State for Agriculture, José Diogo Albuquerque, announced today that the first grants under the 2014-2020 Rural Development Programme will ready to be processed as from 15 November this year.

The Government already has agreed flagship measures with the European Commissioner for investment in projects by young farmers and new agribusiness initiatives.