Portugal’s unemployment rate at the end of 2017, compared to the end of the previous year, fell from 10.2% to 7.8%, the third largest reduction in the EU, according to data revealed by Eurostat.
The Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) has confirmed that the pulp mills above the Abrantes dam on the river Tagus have been responsible for the pollution that a week ago, carpeted the river in a layer of foam.
The folly of getting used to the current mild weather and expecting it to last until Spring, is about to be exposed as a blast of cold air is due to sweep across Portugal from Thursday lunchtime, sending daytime temperatures into low single figures across most of the country, except in the Algarve.
The Judicial Police today arrested 17 people involved in the theft State funds from the Institute of Social Security. 
The Government purchased six second-hand Kamov helicopters in 2006/07, all of which now are grounded, to the distress of those running the National Institute of Emergency Medicine and the National Civil Protection Authority.
The January sky is to host the first blue moon of the year tomorrow evening, January 31st. The first full moon happened as the year began, and the second full moon in the month is about to arrive - making it a blue moon.
Also this full moon will be happening very close to the moon’s perigee (closest in orbit to the earth) so it has been labelled a super moon as it’s 15,000 miles closer to earth, appearing about 14% larger and 30% brighter than when at its apogee.
The government is to scrap 2,300 laws dating from between 1975 and 1980 that are no longer needed but have lingered on the statute books as nobody thought to remove them.
Two former Secretaries of State in the José Sócrates government, have been accused of embezzlement.
