How an entire Afghan orchestra got asylum in Portugal | Focus on Europe

The Taliban's music ban forced an entire Afghan youth orchestra into exile. The students at Afghanistan's National Institute for Music – more than 250 in total – have been granted asylum in Portugal.

Portugal: From hard-hit COVID hotspot to vaccination success story

 

One of the world's worst COVID-19 hotspots last winter, Portugal, has since become Europe's vaccination success story, with nearly nine out of ten people fully immunized. But a new surge in cases has put the authorities back on alert.

Holiday plans in tatters as UK tightens borders - BBC Newsnight

 The great summer getaway is under threat as Portugal is placed on the UK’s amber travel list, amid rising Covid cases and concern over a "Nepal mutation of the so-called Indian variant".

Racism in Portugal: A blind spot for the media?

Do Portugal's mainstream media deny racism and lack diversity? A look into reporting of race in Portuguese media.

In Portugal's election last October, Romualda Fernandes, Beatriz Gomes Dias, and Joacine Katar Moreira made history by becoming the first women of African descent elected to Parliament.

Dias, Gomes and Moreira all represent different political parties - the Socialist Party, Left Bloc and Livre, respectively - but their critiques of racism in Portuguese society have been credited with catalysing a debate that many see as long overdue.

Iran: From patriotism to protests

How the downing of a passenger aircraft flipped the narrative in Iran. Plus, the reporting of race in Portuguese media.

From mourning Soleimani to protesting against the regime

When a US drone strike killed Iran's most important military figure, General Qassem Soleimani, two weeks ago, it provided Tehran with an opening to rally the Iranian people to back their Islamic leaders against the United States.

For a few days, that seemed to be the case.

Then a passenger plane was shot down over Tehran, and Iran's leaders chose to lie to the public, before finally admitting three days later that they had taken the plane down by mistake.

Slavery Routes: For All the Gold in the World

To expand their wealth, the Portuguese set up the slave trade, in which Africa was the centre.

At the end of the Middle Ages, Europe opened up to the world and discovered that it was at the margins of the world's main area for wealth generation: Africa.

Portuguese explorers were the first to set out to conquer Africa's gold. When explorers reached the coast of West Africa, they saw its people as a supply of labour and the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade was established.

Economic ambition coupled with a religiously driven effort to expand Christendom Pope, Nicholas V morally endorsed the Portuguese enterprise and a legal framework for the enslavement of Africa.