EAST TIMOR: Elusive Peace

Five years of independence have done little to improve the lives of the long-suffering population of East Timor. In the latest wave of violence, young girls were raped at a convent by unidentified men, 142 homes have been set on fire and United Nations vehicles have been the targets of stone-throwing over the last five days.

GUINEA-BISSAU: African Paradise for South American Traffickers

Guinea-Bissau has become the first African narco-state, where South American traffickers have set up their headquarters and hideouts for large-scale cocaine smuggling operations into the European Union (EU).

PORTUGAL: Epidemic of Conscientious Objection to Performing Abortion

Pleading "conscientious objection," a significant proportion of doctors in Portugal are preventing women from making use of the law authorising abortions up to 10 weeks of gestation, which entered into force on Sunday.

SPAIN-PORTUGAL: Binational Village Wants to Be Simply ‘European’

This tiny village of 109 people straddles the border between Portugal and Spain. On one side are the 50 houses of Rio de Onor de Braganza and on the other are the 20 houses of Ríohonor de Castilla. But the locals feel they are one community, and they want their hometown to be declared the first simply "European" village.

PORTUGAL: Making Up for Lost Time in Renewable Energy

For decades, Portugal basically ignored the infinite possibilities proffered by its geographical conditions for producing clean energy. But that is starting to change, and the country is now among those that are putting the strongest emphasis on alternative energy sources.

CAPE VERDE: Migration – a Key Aspect of the Country’s History

The small West African island nation of Cape Verde, which was uninhabited when Portuguese navigators discovered it in 1460, now has more citizens living abroad than at home. And growing numbers of women are joining the diaspora.

PORTUGAL: Strike Takes Aim at Socialist Government’s “Neoliberal” Policies

The economic decline of Portugal's middle class, the growing marginalisation of the poorest of the poor, the uncertainty facing young people and drastic measures - described by critics as "neoliberal" - adopted by the socialist government form the backdrop to Wednesday's general strike in this southern European country.

PORTUGAL: Some Missing Children More Equal than Others

Never before has the Portuguese idiom "para o inglês ver" (literally: for the English to see), which means putting on a front to impress outsiders and ward off criticism, been so apt as today in Portugal, when the entire country has its attention riveted on the case of a four-year-old British girl who disappeared from a hotel two weeks ago.

ANGOLA: Oil-Driven Boom Set to Take on Nuclear Flavour

Like the phoenix, Angola - sub-Saharan Africa's second largest oil producer after Nigeria - has risen from the ashes of decades of armed conflict, and analysts are talking about its potential to one day become an economic, political and military powerhouse in Africa.

ELECTIONS-EAST TIMOR: Perseverance Wins the Day

In the late 1970s, diplomats at United Nations headquarters in New York got used to seeing a discreet young man plying the hallways and conference rooms, trying to drum up support for what seemed a lost cause in a tiny country that few had even heard about.

PRESS FREEDOM: On Parole in Portuguese-Speaking Countries

Only a small proportion of the 235 million people who live in the eight Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) countries scattered over four continents enjoy access to a truly free press.

HUMAN RIGHTS: Activists and Military Officers Hand in Hand

Joined together in an enormous human chain and singing songs that marked the end of Portugal's 48-year dictatorship on Apr. 25, 1974, military officers who overthrew the regime and human rights activists from 105 different countries came out in defence of the world's migrants.

ANGOLA-MOZAMBIQUE: Women Face Unequal Inequality

The rights of women enshrined in the constitutions of Angola and Mozambique are identical. But in practice, there are enormous differences.

PORTUGAL: Extreme Right to Host Anti-Immigrant Conference

The miniscule but active extreme right groups in Portugal, which in the last few days have gained some notoriety in the press despite their small size, have invited like-minded organisations from other European countries to a "continent-wide" meeting of leaders opposed to immigration.

EAST TIMOR: Elections on Track, Under Heavy Guard

With less than a week to go to the presidential elections in East Timor, the violence has not let up in this small island nation that was born in May 2002 after nearly five centuries of Portuguese colonial rule and 25 years of brutal occupation by Indonesia.

PORTUGAL: Salazar ‘Greatest Portuguese Ever’, TV Viewers Say

News media and academic circles in Portugal are vying with each other to explain why the public chose former dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar (1932-1968) in a poll on state television channel RTP as "The Greatest Portuguese Who Ever Lived."

HEALTH: Living in Portugal, Giving Birth in Spain

Drastic public health budget cuts in Portugal have led to the closure of emergency and maternity services and prompted protests against the government of socialist Prime Minister José Sócrates.

AFRICA-EUROPE: Goodbye Rhetoric, Hello Political Dialogue

In recent years the ties between the European Union and Africa have produced good results in terms of aid, but there has been a serious lack of political dialogue. Now Portugal, with its extensive experience in Africa and the support of the 27 EU leaders, is planning to change this.

INT’L WOMEN’S DAY-EU: Some More Unequal Than Others

In spite of their conquests in the 20th century, and so far in the 21st, women in the European Union (EU) are still a long way from achieving equality with men - a goal unequivocally laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

ANGOLA: Five Years of Peace Marked by Economic Boom – and Dire Poverty

At dawn exactly five years ago 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.

HEALTH-ANGOLA: War, Plague, Pestilence and Death

Nearly five years after the advent of peace in Angola, following four decades of war which cost a million lives, the new killers in this Southern African country are cholera, malaria and AIDS.