For immediate release 
afrol News launches Portuguese language service

Oslo, 5 January 2005 - As afrol News re-opened its services after a two-week Christmas break this week, the Oslo-based news agency also launched services in a third language; Portuguese. The service is currently only open to our African partner media, while services in English and Spanish are open to the public at large.

The first-ever automated news spots in Portuguese language today were distributed by afrol News. The news stories included articles by afrol News and by our Cape Verdean partner media, A Semana.

Earlier, occasional articles in Portuguese had been distributed manually, thus providing Mozambican media with occasional articles from Cape Verde and vice versa. From today, however, this is a regular daily service that also includes afrol News' proper news articles in Portuguese language.

The service however still is limited in size and accessibility. These limitations are illustrated by the fact that all our partner media receiving the Portuguese newsfeed still prefer to receive the Spanish language service as a back-up.

As afrol News' proper Portuguese production still is limited to editing press releases in that language and the service is dominated by our partner medias' production, the Portuguese service will not yet be made available to the broad public. Only partner media or paying customers may subscribe to the service. Plans however exist to broaden the service when afrol News opens its planned subsidiary in Las Palmas (Canary Islands) later this year.

The news production of Cape Verde's A Semana is currently the backbone of afrol News' Portuguese language service. The service is based on A Semana's proper news production, A Semana's translations of afrol News articles, news copy from Mediacoop (Mozambique), translations by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA, Namibia) and elaborated press releases in Portuguese, prepared by afrol News (Oslo).

About afrol News:
afrol News is an independent news agency based in Oslo (Norway), exclusively covering African affairs in English, Spanish and Portuguese language. afrol News works with a network of independent African media, which it provides with a free international news coverage. afrol News also distributes contextualised news articles from its partner media to its readers and customers. afrol News was founded as a private company in April 2000.

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© afrol News. Press releases are for free and full redistribution.    Contact information: "Contact afrol News"