Fears about the eurozone’s recovery are preventing businesses in the UK from investing, according to the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

It said that 55% of British firms are not seeking new finance in the next year.

After years of defying gravity, property owners in London are flooding the market in the hope of selling high and then buying low.

One agency says the new houses coming onto the market now outnumber buyers by a factor of three.

The Águas de Portugal website was hacked into on Sunday as part of a continuing series of cyber attacks on well know Portuguese establishment sites.

The ‘OutsideTheLaw’ group of ‘hacktivists’ released private email addresses and other information relating to Águas de Portugal’s management.

Algarve fishermen are rising to the challenge laid down by the Secretary of State of the Sea, Manuel Pinto de Abreu, to get live octopus into the premium Japanese market.

Algarve octopus may join the steady and profitable export of tuna to Japan where both are considered a delicacy and attract high prices.

In a firm rebuttal of health workers' union claims the Regional Health Administration of the Algarve has stated that is investing in health and has hired 22 doctors and 44 nurses this year to work in the region's hospitals. It did not mention how many professional had left the service, either by retirement or by moving to the private sector.

The Administration was responding to the strike action across the region's hospitals last Friday.

Desidério Silva, president of the Algarve Tourism Board has broken one of the key rules of public relations by rising to the bait, this time laid by journalist Henrique Raposo writing in Expresso.

Raposo, in a fit of pique, made several less then complimentary observations about the Algarve´s people and published them in a nation newspaper. 

Portugal´s Authority for Food and Economic Safety (ASAE) has seized counterfeit goods worth €8 million in the first half of 2014.  

A total of 2.3 million products have been seized, including clothing, auto parts, perfumes, pharmaceuticals, drugs, cigarettes, electrical items and toys.

The main health service workers´union claimed an overall strike rate of 80% today with all non-emergency patients being turned away.

The nurses´ union spokesperson said that the strike at Lagos Hospital was solid. Speaking to journalists, Nuno Manjua took stock of the figures during the morning and said that "the workers at the hospital in Lagos are 100% out on strike, Portimao this morning was close to 90% and the hospital in Faro was close to 80%."