Catarina Martins, the feisty and recently empowered leader of the Left Bloc, said today that all state pensions will be unfrozen and that those who are receiving low pensions will see an increase.

The Socialist Party, the Communists and the Left Bloc are deep in negotiation with the aim of presenting a left wing solution that can be accepted as an alternative to the minority coalition that currently leads the country.

The Guadiana will be navigable upstream as far as Alcoutim from next Tuesday, November 3rd, according to General Directorate of Marine Resources.

The announcement was made during the seminar 'Opportunities and Structuring Projects in Cross-Border Cooperation' organized by the Odiana Association and held in Castro Marim.

The trial of Filipe Silva started today. Silva is the Vilamoura based businessman who abducted his daughter Ellie (pictured) in 2012, sparking a nationwide search which tracked the girl down to an apartment in Oporto.

Witness claimed in court today that Filipe Silva did not plan the kidnapping of his daughter, stating that the girl told her father that she did not want to return to Ireland where she lived with her mother Candice.

Sócrates defence team is busying itself defending the honour of their star client by taking on selected of the nation’s media titles.

After this week’s successful injunction taken out against the publishers of Correio da Manhã, Sócrates’ lawyers are preparing to sue the Sol weekly newspaper for defamation.

The President of the Republic oversaw the swearing in of Pedro Passos Coelho and his ministers and secretaries of state which now form Portugal's 20th government.

Both the president and prime minister sent messages to the left wing parties with Passos Coelho warning of the danger of any sharp deviations in Portuguese politics.

Another link in the legendary Stilwell chain has been broken with the news that Chris Stilwell has died in the Algarve of a heart attack, aged 63.

The Stilwell family has been a reference point for Anglo-Portuguese relations for over a century when Chris’ grandfather arrived in Lisbon in 1904 and took a Portuguese wife.

Lisbon District Prosecutor's Office has demanded that Canadian academic Peter Boone be tried for writing articles that predicted and helped trigger Portugal’s debt crisis and which bagged him over UDS800,000 due to subsequent shifts in bond prices.

Boone’s lawyers say their client denies any wrongdoing and ask for the Portuguese prosecutors to drop the case, adding that just because their client had an opinion that turned out to be correct, he is not guilty of a crime.

The eurozone has managed to ascend out of deflation in September while the jobless rate dipped to a three-year low.

Unemployment fell to 10.8% for the region compared to 11.5% in September last year.