Scores of detainees were injured on Saturday when a six-storey police building collapsed in the Angolan capital Luanda. Angolan police chief Ambrosio de Lemos said the cause of the collapse of the National Criminal Investigation Department building was so far unknown but no ”external factor” was involved.
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/ 12 February 2008
More than 10 000 people have been forced from their homes and two thousand makeshift houses swept away by floods after heavy rain pounded parts of southern Angola. Some of those displaced were being put up in tents at makeshift camps while others were being housed in schools.
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/ 23 January 2008
Angola’s opposition Unita party accused members of the country’s ruling party of vandalising the tomb of Jonas Savimbi, the rebel leader who led a 27-year bush war against the government. Savimbi, who is seen as a freedom fighter by some Angolans but a war criminal by many others, was killed by government troops in 2002.
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/ 20 January 2008
A twin-engine plane slammed into a mountain in rain and fog in Angola’s central highlands, killing at least 11 people, state media reported. Angolan National Radio said there were no survivors among the 11 people on board the Beechcraft-200 when it crashed on Saturday morning.
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/ 27 December 2007
Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos said on Thursday that the oil-rich African nation would hold its delayed parliamentary elections on September 5 and 6 next year, the state-run Angop news agency reported. An estimated eight million Angolans are expected to vote in the election. The country has not held a national poll since a disastrous 1992 presidential race.
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/ 18 December 2007
Two actors were shot dead and another three wounded while filming a crime drama in the Angolan capital, Luanda, on Monday when police mistook them as armed robbers, their director said. The tragedy happened as a crowd of onlookers were watching a scene being filmed in the crime-ridden suburb of Sambila.
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/ 6 December 2007
As Portugal prepares to host a summit of African and European leaders, the construction in its ex-colony Angola bears testimony to China’s growing influence on the continent. An army of Chinese construction workers is transforming the skyline of Luanda in an alliance which has put the squeeze on European partners.
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/ 26 November 2007
Angola opposition on Monday denounced what it called government ”strategy” to delay legislative elections scheduled for next year. In a statement, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) said that acts of ”intimidation” and ”increased attempts to curtail individual and collective freedoms in Angola” were evidence of the alleged strategy.
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/ 1 November 2007
Angola could hold national elections as early as May next year, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos was quoted as saying on Thursday. ”The president of the republic will likely call the elections for the period between May and August, and possibly September of 2008,” state newspaper Jornal de Angola quoted him as saying at the end of a visit to Mozambique.
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/ 27 October 2007
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has said he is determined to attend a Europe-Africa summit in Lisbon next month despite pressure from Britain that he be kept off the invitation list. ”Portugal said they would invite me,” Mugabe said in an interview published by state media in Angola on Friday.
Five children were killed and another seriously injured in an Angolan central rural district when they tried to open a mortar shell left from the civil war, an official said on Tuesday. The children were playing in Dando village, near Nharea in Bie province, when they discovered the 81mm shell.
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/ 26 September 2007
A two-year bridge-building project in Angola has reopened a vital road to a large area of the country’s isolated eastern Moxico province, destroyed during a 27-year civil war, the United Nations said on Wednesday. The main road leading to Lumbula N’guimbo was heavily mined during the war, which ended in 2002.
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/ 4 September 2007
Private investors will inject about -billion into a 15-year project to revamp the crumbling seafront and picturesque bay surrounding Angola’s capital, Luanda, state media reported on Tuesday. New hotels, offices and houses will be built as part of the effort to spruce up an area stretching from the Port of Luanda to the Ilha peninsula.
Angola is planning to privatise many of its more than 250 state-owned firms, but there are fears that the process could be marked by cronyism and cement the oil-rich nation’s reputation as one of Africa’s most corrupt. In an interview with Reuters, Angola’s secretary of state for public enterprises said there were too many state-owned companies.
Authorities in Angola have cleared about 50-million square metres of landmines under the country’s ongoing demining programme, state media reported on Tuesday. The coordinator of the executive demining commission, Joao Baptista Kussumua, made the statement at a ceremony to receive two demining machines donated by the Japanese government.
Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) secretary general Abdalla Salem el-Badri held talks with Angolan officials on Monday on oil prices and production quotas. Angola, the largest sub-Saharan oil producer in Africa after Nigeria, joined Opec in December.
Holden Roberto, one of the fathers of Angolan independence, has died of cardiac arrest at the age of 84, the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) announced on August 3. Roberto formed the FNLA in the 1960’s as one of several nationalist movements pressing for an end to Portuguese colonial rule.
Human rights groups accused Angola on Wednesday of intimidating their activists ahead of elections next year and urged the European Union to press the African country to stop the harassment. Amnesty International, Global Witness and other NGOs said a firm EU response was needed to ensure groups could continue their work in preparation for the elections.
Angola’s state-run diamond company wants foreign companies as partners to tap what it believes are vast pockets of the precious gems, a company official said on Thursday. Angola, the world’s fifth biggest in terms of value, is exploring only about 40% of the territory believed to have potential for diamond mining.
Members of Angola’s main opposition party streamed into a conference hall on Thursday to cast ballots in a leadership race overshadowed by the ghost of Jonas Savimbi. The two candidates vying to lead the party, incumbent Isaias Samakuva and challenger Abel Chivukuvuku, both have claimed to be ”Savimbistas” of sorts.
An Angolan Airlines plane crashed on landing at an airport in northern Angola on Thursday, killing five people on the same day the European Union said it was blacklisting the airline due to safety concerns. The Boeing 737 plane crashed and broke in half when it landed at an airport in M’banza Congo, north of Luanda.
Fernando Joaquim points to corrugated iron shacks at the feet of one of Angola’s new neighbourhoods and despairs: ”Look at the misery that the government has forced on us!” Joaquim’s was one of nearly 400 families who were left destitute when their homes were demolished to make way for upmarket housing.
African oil will be central to French energy major Total’s efforts to hit its output targets this decade, its head of exploration and production told Reuters. Total is set to increase investment in the region, mainly in Nigeria and Angola, and to a lesser extent in Congo, Yves-Louis Darricarrere said.
Angola may extend the period for registering voters for its first elections in over a decade, fuelling concerns among some political observers that the ballot in the oil-rich nation could be delayed further. An estimated 7,5-million Angolans are being registered for elections next year and in 2009, seen as an important democratic test for the country.
Angola was on Wednesday celebrating five years since the end of its brutal, three-decade-long civil war, with veteran President Jose Eduardo dos Santos identifying a ”rebirth of hope” in the oil-rich nation. A national holiday has been declared to mark the anniversary of the signing of a peace accord on April 4 2002.
Angola on Wednesday celebrates five years of peace after a 27-year civil war as one of Africa’s fastest growing economies, thanks to an oil boom which has however done little to raise living standards. The signing of an accord on April 4 2002, between the government and Unita rebels drew the line under a conflict that left half a million people dead.
A British human rights worker accused of espionage in Angola can leave the country on condition she return if asked to do so, her lawyers said on Thursday. Wykes, an anti-corruption campaigner with Global Witness who was investigating transparency in Angola’s oil sector, was arrested last month.
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/ 19 February 2007
A British woman working for Global Witness is being held by Angolan police in the province of Cabinda after being arrested at the weekend for spying, her lawyer said on Monday. Sarah Wykes was detained on Saturday in the oil-rich northern province while she was meeting members of civil society organisations.
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/ 7 February 2007
Storms that lashed Angola in recent weeks killed at least 114 people, according to a government report cited by state media on Wednesday. Ten people are still missing and more than 28 000 were left homeless by the torrential rain that caused flash floods and mudslides, according to a report presented to Parliament on Tuesday.
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/ 25 January 2007
Seventy-one people have died in flash floods following torrential rains across Angola, with almost all the fatalities reported in the seaside capital Luanda, the fire service said on Thursday. Luanda is home to about 4,5-million people and despite Angola’s oil riches has a skeletal infrastructure, which has been further damaged by the downpours.
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/ 24 January 2007
Fifty-three people have died in Luanda, Angola’s seaside capital, in torrential rains that have lashed the city for three days, a police spokesperson said on Wednesday. ”We have recorded 53 deaths until now,” Divaldo Martins said, adding that more than 1Â 300 families were homeless.
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/ 10 January 2007
A mystery illness that left 12 people dead in northern Angola late last year was caused by intestinal parasites and was not a recurrence of the Ebola-like Marburg virus, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday. The spate of deaths in Uije province had raised fears that the Marburg virus had flared up again in the region.