The European Commission has noted that Portugal’s insufficient debt reduction targets have left the nation's public finances at ‘high risk’ in the medium term.

This less-than-cheery assessment is set out in the "2018 Budgetary Sustainability Report" published today by the EC’s Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs.

The sale of seized goods and property through the e-auction system has raised €930 million since the scheme started in May 2016.

In the past three years, more than 9,000 properties have been auctioned off, each one in lieu of debt and often representing a personal tragedy. The electronic auction system is vaunted as being, "faster, transparent and appealing," by those who run it.

The violence used in a series of robberies in Faro, Olhão and São Brás de Alportel has shocked the prosecution lawyer as four men stand trial in Faro Court for the crimes committed in 2017.

"The Public Prosecutor's Office of Faro Court delivered the final arguments in a trial of four defendants accused of being involved in ten violent assaults during the year 2017 in isolated areas of the three municipalities.

Convicted fraudster, Duarte Lima, today lodged another appeal in an increasingly futile attempt to stay out of jail

The latest appeal is to the Constitutional Court to avoid starting a  six-year prison sentence handed down in the BPN-Homeland case.

The main restaurant street in Olhão, Avenida 5 de Outubro, currently being dug up, is to have more pavement space for diners. Work is progressing slowly with businesses complaining of a severe drop in low season trade.

The Council, aware that the civil engineering contract is not progressing as planned, sensibly has decided to exempt affected businesses from paying commercial rates until the conclusion of the work, which now is scheduled for the end of May.

Theresa May is still Britain’s prime minister this morning after surviving yet another day as a wholly unconvincing, ‘head of Brexit,’ aided by an opposition that fails to take advantage of the hand it had been dealt.

The latest May's supremacy, a vote of ‘no confidence’ tabled by the opposition leader, saw rebel Conservatives and MPs from the all-important Democratic Unionist party, swing behind the prime minister to defeat the motion with a majority of 19.

Parliament is to debate the legalisation of cannabis for recreational use. With one in ten Portuguese having tried the drug and with almost half a million active consumers, it may be seen as pointless continuing its classification as illegal, according to pro-drug pressure groups.

The usage figures increase in the 25 to 44 years age group, according to a national survey prepared by the Intervention Service on Admissible Behaviors and Dependencies (SICAD) in 2016/17.

Former socialist minister Armando Vara has surrendered himself to the tender ministrations of Évora  jail to start his five-year sentence.

Vara had been convicted of three charges of trafficking of influence in the long-running Face Oculta trial.