African influences help merge periphery with centre to widen our frames of references
Kuduro, an urban dance music style, pays post-apocalyptic tribute to Angola’s capital city
This extract from the book Ten Cities details the evolution of the club scene in Nairobi, with a focus on the mid-1990s
A team of legal experts in Lisbon is sifting through nearly 30 000 pages of police evidence on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
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/ 14 February 2008
A high-level mission from Angola has visited Portugal to entice potential investors with business opportunities arising from the new-found stability in the south-western African nation, one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. But foreign investors should forget about merely transferring profits abroad without leaving any benefits behind.
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/ 11 February 2008
East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta is "out of danger" and "recovering" following treatment in Australia after being shot in the stomach by rebels, the speaker of the country’s Parliament said on Monday. "According to the information we have, the president has been operated on and the bullet that was in his lung has been removed," Fernando de Araujo said.
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/ 8 February 2008
Angola’s upcoming elections do not pose a risk to the country’s economic and political stability, Deputy Prime Minister Aguinaldo Jaime said at a conference in Lisbon on Friday. Angola is expected to hold a long-delayed parliamentary election on September 5 and 6 and presidential elections in 2009.
This year’s Dakar Rally has been cancelled over security concerns, in particular direct ”terrorist” threats to the race, organisers announced on Friday. The race had been due to start in Lisbon on Saturday but the murder of four French tourists in Mauritania on December 24 led to the French government advising against any travel to the country.
The head of the Portuguese agency responsible for enforcing a new ban on smoking in public was seen lighting up at a New Year party, breaking the law on the first day it came into effect. Antonio Nunes, president of Portugal’s food standards agency, was photographed by the daily, Diario de Noticias, smoking a cigar at a casino on the outskirts of Lisbon.
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/ 13 December 2007
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown signed the European Union’s reform treaty in Lisbon on Thursday, hours after his fellow European leaders inked the text at a ceremony he missed, an Agence France-Presse photographer witnessed. The treaty replaces a draft EU constitution scuppered by French and Dutch referendums in 2005.
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/ 10 December 2007
European and African leaders were seeking to open a new era of closer relations, but their summit closed on Sunday with squabbling over trade and human rights. Old divisions surfaced at the first summit in seven years between the continents as leaders swapped accusations over the crises in Zimbabwe and Darfur.
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/ 9 December 2007
Most African leaders on Sunday rejected new trade deals demanded by the European Union, dealing a blow to efforts to forge a new economic partnership at the first European Union (EU)-Africa summit in seven years. The EU wants to replace expiring trade accords with so-called Economic Partnership Agreements or temporary deals.
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/ 9 December 2007
German Chancellor Angela Merkel directly confronted Robert Mugabe over human rights abuses in front of European and African leaders in Portugal on Saturday, putting the Zimbabwean leader under the spotlight at a summit that has been overshadowed by the despot’s presence.
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/ 8 December 2007
Leaders of Europe and Africa opened a landmark summit on Saturday designed to forge a new partnership of equals, but with strains showing over trade and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s presence. ”We are here … to write a new page in the history of Europe and Africa,” Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates said in an inaugural address.
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/ 7 December 2007
His arrival may have been low-key, but veteran Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is likely to steal the spotlight at this weekend’s European Union-Africa summit with his first trip to Europe in more than two years. Usually the subject of a travel ban from the EU, Mugabe touched down in Lisbon late on Thursday.
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/ 7 December 2007
The leaders of Africa and the Europe Union (EU) gathered in Lisbon on Friday for a summit designed to forge a new era in ties, but which is in danger of being overshadowed by the presence of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. The two-day summit in the Portuguese capital is set to be dominated by issues such as trade, immigration, the environment and human rights.
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/ 7 December 2007
Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu urged European Union (EU) leaders on Friday to confront Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on his human rights record, saying
their silence would be interpreted as condoning violations. ”I am deeply saddened by what has happened,” said Tutu.
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/ 27 November 2007
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said he will attend a European Union-Africa summit in December in Lisbon, triggering a boycott of the meeting by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. ”Yes, I’m going,” Mugabe was quoted on Tuesday as telling Portugal’s Lusa news agency in Mozambique.
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/ 25 November 2007
Two weeks from hosting the second-ever summit between Europe and Africa, Portugal is scrambling to ensure that Zimbabwe’s contentious presence does not eclipse the chance for a true partnership between the European Union and the world’s poorest continent.
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/ 19 October 2007
Former British prime minister Tony Blair would be a good choice as the European Union’s first full-time president, French and British leaders said on Friday while stressing that the job is not yet on offer. Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, praised Blair’s current role as international Middle East envoy, and said he would be a strong candidate for any similar high-profile role.
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/ 19 October 2007
European Union leaders voiced relief at clinching a deal on Friday on a treaty to reform the 27-nation bloc’s institutions, replacing a defunct constitution and ending a two-year crisis of confidence in Europe’s future. ”It’s an important page in the history of Europe,” Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates said on arriving to chair the second day of an EU summit.
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/ 19 October 2007
Sweden and Finland on Thursday called for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to be excluded from a European Union-Africa summit in December but left open whether they would join a British boycott if he showed up. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen also said he had not decided whether to attend the summit in Lisbon if Mugabe came.
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/ 15 October 2007
The European Union should tell British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to ”shut up” on democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe ahead of an Africa-EU summit in December, Zimbabwe’s information minister said on Monday. Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said that Brown had no right to lecture Zimbabwe when he himself was ”running away” with power.
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/ 21 September 2007
Gordon Brown or Robert Mugabe? One won’t go to a summit between Europe and Africa in December, but the Portuguese hosts say the potential rewards of closer ties between the two continents outweigh the antagonism between the leaders of Britain and Zimbabwe.
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/ 18 September 2007
Sir Alex Ferguson will let Wayne Rooney off the leash as Manchester United start their Champions League challenge at Sporting Lisbon on Wednesday. Rooney has been sidelined since breaking a metatarsal bone in United’s first match of the season against Reading, but he is set to feature at the Jose Alvalade Stadium.
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/ 13 September 2007
The European Union (EU) executive plans to encourage legal migration into Europe to plug labour shortages caused by a declining, ageing population, EU officials said on Thursday. Prime Minister José Sócrates of Portugal, urged support for the proposal, saying it was crucial to meet labour shortages and curb illegal immigration and people trafficking.
The Great Wall of China, Petra in Jordan and Brazil’s statue of Christ the Redeemer are among the modern day seven wonders of the world chosen in a poll of 100-million online voters. The other four are Peru’s Machu Picchu, Mexico’s Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, the Colosseum in Rome and the Taj Mahal in India.
Portugal’s Foreign Minister Luis Amado said on Monday Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe would not be welcome at a European Union-African Union summit being held in November in Lisbon. ”Personally I have no interest in Mugabe coming to Lisbon,” Amado said.
Portuguese authorities searching for missing girl Madeleine McCann have placed a British man under formal investigation in the case, Lusa news agency said on Tuesday. It quoted police as saying the suspect was Robert Murat (32), who was questioned late on Monday along with an unidentified German woman and a Portuguese man.
Portugal’s president on Tuesday ratified a new law permitting abortion up until the 10th week of pregnancy, but recommended a raft of measures that would discourage the procedure in the mostly Roman Catholic country. Parliament voted overwhelmingly last month to legalise abortion, scrapping previous tight restrictions.
The United States-based internet governing body rejected a proposal on Friday to create an adults-only zone on the internet, or a .xxx domain. Supporters of an .xxx domain argued it would make it easier to confine sex sites and filter them out. Opponents argued it would make pornography on the internet easier to find.
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/ 23 February 2007
At dawn exactly five years ago on Thursday, the founder and leader of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita), Jonas Savimbi, was shot down in an ambush by the Angolan army. Five years later, Unita is a legal political party holding 70 seats in the 220-member Parliament.