Hugo Coelho’s journalism portfolio

Hugo Coelho

Publihed in Green Pulse

Up to 190 senior officials are staking out their starting positions as talks begin in Bangkok on the first global binding treaty to address climate change.

A new U.N. treaty to fight climate change should aim to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the U.N.’s top climate change official said last week.

Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn, said that studies by the U.N. Climate Panel indicated that emissions of greenhouse gases had to peak within 10 to 15 years and halve by mid-century to avert the worst effects of global warming.

“That for me personally is the measure of success,” he told Reuters, saying the goals should be cornerstones of a broad treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December 2009. “It’s not going to be easy.”

Yvo de Boer spoke the week before 190 nations’ senior officials meet at Bangkok to kick off negotiations for a new global binding treaty on climate change.

The Bangkok talks starting on April 2 aim to set out a detailed work plan leading to the new global agreement against global warming to be signed in 2009 in Copenhagen.

The new treaty will replace the Kyoto Protocols, the main provisions of which end in 2012, and is expected to bind Kyoto’s outsiders such as the United States, China and India.

Meeting for the first time since marathon talks in December on the Indonesian island of Bali, world climate negotiators will try to thrash out differences that almost derailed their last gathering.

Bali saw countries, including the United States — which never ratified the Kyoto deal — agree to launch the new negotiations. In Bangkok, nations should produce a specific plan “outlining who does what, when and why,” the UNFCCC’s spokesman, John Hay, said.

Talks in Bali fail to deliver any binding and short-term agreement on curbing emissions over opposition from the United States.

Talks had almost fallen apart amid disagreement between the United States and developing countries over who should pay the bill to curb emissions globally.

After a dramatic session in which Washington was booed for opposing demands by poor nations for the rich to do more to help them fight warming climate the US negotiators stepped back and allowed the deal to go ahead.

The final text of the conference called on developed nations to consider “quantified” emissions cuts and developing countries to consider “mitigation actions.”

The Bali meeting also agreed to launch a U.N. fund to help poor nations cope with damage from climate change such as droughts or rising seas.

In Bangkok, the crucial question of emissions will dominate negotiations, but activists warned that no agreement on the issue was likely to come out of the talks.

“There are no great breakthroughs to be expected, because the countries are wrestling for their starting positions,” said Martin Hiller, spokesman of conservation group WWF.

Angela Anderson, director of the global warming programme with the US-based Pew Environment Group, said she expected positive momentum in Bangkok, but warned that individual interests would be on the climate brokers’ minds.

“They are out of the dialogue process and into negotiating, so countries tend to lay down some stronger markers at the beginning,” she told AFP.

“You’re going to see some tough positions floated, probably some pretty serious reaction.”

Hugo Coelho, Philippe Carvalho, Tobias Spelz

Fora de Linha

10.05

No fim daestrada militar que vai das Portas de Benfica à Damaia, ergue-se um amontoado de casas cinzentas de betão. Nesta atravancada muralha há apenas uma brecha visível. A rua não tem mais de cinco metros de largo, mas está repleta de azafamados transeuntes. Um grupo de quatro rapazes aí permanece, alheios ao resto, em conversa animada. Falam crioulo caboverdiano, a língua oficial do 6 de Maio, um ghetto de imigrantes africanos na periferia de Lisboa.

Quando nos aproximamos, a conversa cessa. As atenções destes guardas de fronteira viram-se para os intrusos. Não são comuns as visitas de desconhecidos aobairro. A sua reputação desaconselha e desencoraja. O 6 de Maio é famoso por ser uma zona de tráfico de droga, onde violentas rusgas policiais fazem o enredo das suas histórias.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hugo Coelho

Fora de Linha

11.05

Gonçalo Ventura, 27 anos tem pela frente uma missão de responsabilidade: este fim de tarde, é pela sua voz que as manobras dos jogadores do Benfica e do Vila real, em campo no Estádio do Estádio da Luz, em Lisboa, vão chegar aos ouvintes da Antena 1.

Antes do início da partida, deambula pela tribuna de imprensa, procura junto de outros jornalistas as últimas. As últimas que Alexandre Afonso, o relator, diz ao microfone e ecoam por todo os rádios do país.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hugo Coelho

Fora de Linha

11.05

Quando são quase 18:30, os corações batem mais depressa na tribuna da Antena 1. Enquanto os técnicos ainda procuram a linha, Alexandre Afonso, 32 anos, relê num murmúrio final as palavras escritas. O sinal de OK e uma voz ao fundo nos headphones, dão o tiro de partida da reportagem para o bloco de notícias.

“Estamos no Estádio da Luz para acompanhar o jogo entre o Benfica e o VilaReal da quarta jornada da Liga dos Campeões” ouve-se a voz do relator nos rádios por todo o país.

“Os encarnados procuram hoje aqui na Luz levar de vencida o apelidado submarino amarelo e assim dar um passo de gigante em direcção aos oitavos de final da Liga Milionária. 50 000 são esperados na luz. 50000 com a esperança de verem o submarino ir ao fundo.” O jornalista fala em passo acelerado, gesticulando e franzindo o rosto como se esparasse ser mais convincente. Depressa o papel acaba e a improvisação toma o seu lugar. Read the rest of this entry »

Hugo Coelho

Publicado na revista Visão ed.797

11.06.08

Título Original: Missão quase-impossível

Um oficial da GNR está incumbido de formar os polícias do país que Portugal ainda não reconheceu.

A tarefa de Fernando Bessa, no Kosovo, tem o seu quê de missão impossível e uns traços de diplomacia secreta à James Bond. O major da GNR é a guarda avançada da diplomacia nacional, no mais novo país do
mundo.

mais

As pernas esticadas em cima de uma mesa de madeira, o olhar perdido não com o que vê mas com o que sonha, André Carvalhas parece um guerrilheiro do Che à entrada do quartel de Guevara.

O edifício atrás de si, em tempos um tribunal, está ocupado e marcado pela guerra. As salas de audiência e os gabinetes juízes ausentes estão cobertas de camas articuladas – que por aqui carinhosamente se chamam burros do mato -, de mobílias desfeitas e estantes desengonçadas com o peso de papeis arrumados ao calhas. As  janelas estão algumas estão partidas e outras tapadas. E nas varandas sacos de areia cobrem o aço negro de espingardas.

Cá fora, no átrio, estão estacionados meia dúzia de carros de guerra e ao seu lado soldados rendidos fazem a barba em bacias de improviso ao sol da manhã.

Apesar das aparências, reina a paz e o sossego no improvisado quartel Português na cidade mais perigosa do Kosovo: Mitrovica. Read the rest of this entry »

Já se ouviam os tiros ainda não se via a tropa. Agachados a coberto das xaimites e do fumo das granadas os soldados avançavam com vagarosa coragem para a guerra.

A um a coragem, o fumo e o tanque juntos não chegaram. Tombou ferido na perna com uma bala terrorista disparada dos edificios devolutos e nem o tinoni da ambulância abafou os gritos de agonia.

Foi a única baixa, treatralizada, do exércicio de aprontamento para a missão no Líbano da Unidade de Engenharia 4 que decorreu ontem no Regimento de Infantaria 13, em Vila Real.

Daqui a um mês será a sério. Os 141 militares portugueses que partem para aquele país do Médio Oriente em conflito há mais de 30 anos.

“O Libano é um local em que a tensão é permanente”, disse o comandante da força, Tenente Coronel Alves Caetano. “Não podemos falar em receios mas estamos conscientes dos riscos que fazem parte da nossa profissão”.

Portugal está há ano e meio no território integrado na força multinacional da ONU, UNIFIL, com um batalhão de engenharia estacionado na aldeia de Shama no sul do país de onde se avista a cidade de Tiro e a fronteira com Israel.

Os 15 000 homens da UNIFIL estão autorizados a “tomar todas as medidas necessárias” para cumprir a missão de apoiar o exército Libanês a reestableecer a ordem no Sul do país, palco recorrente de confrontos entre as milicias do Hezebolah e o exército Israelita.

Apesar dos perigos, os portugueses ainda não dispararam um tiro. Mais do que deitarem abaixo com as armas, os Engenheiros-soldados foram para ajudar a levantar um país do chão.

No Líbano, já construiram escolas, campos de jogos e cemitérios. Neste momento, constoiem gabinetes e a alargam as fronteiras do quartel-general.

A obra têm lhes valido o acolhimento dos Libaneses. “Todas as acções são importantes para a segurança da própria força. Quanto mais bem-vinda for, muito mais segura estará a força”, disse o major-general Martins Ferreira.

Durante o treino, o novo batalhão construiu uma pequena aldeia com ligações subterrâneas entre edificios e uma estrada de 2.5km para blindados na Fraga de Almotolia,
nos arredores de Vila de Real.

No Líbano para além das construções os militares terão ainda como missão purificar a água, desactivar explosivos e apoiar organizações internacionais no terreno.

A lista não assusta. Nem mesmo os estreantes. Para mais de 70% dos membros do batalhão esta é a primeira missão no estrangeiro. Mas a confiança esconde o receio.

“Não tenho muitas preocupações”, disse o 1º Sargento Rodrigues Corinha. “Tivemos preparação e estamos devidamente esclarecidos sobre o que vamos enfrentar. Falamos com colegas nossos que estiveram em missões e estamos devidamente inteirados do que se vai passar”.

Já Gorette Assunção, 1º cabo socorrista, é mais avisada. Assunção é uma das 14 muheres na unidade e já passou pela Bósnia.

“Na Bósnia já estava tudo mais tranquilo”, disse. “Lá notava-se alguma tranquilidade até a nível da população. No Lìbano não tenho bem noção mas acho que seremos capazes de ultrapassar os problemas“.

Na visita ao destacamento nacional no Sul do Líbano, em Fevereiro, o Presidente da República, Cavaco Silva, disse aos mlitares que estão a prestar um grande serviço à causa da paz, prestigiando o nome de Portugal.

A UnEng4 recebe o estandarte nacional a 8 de Maio e o grosso do batalhão parte para o Líbano no final do mês. Permanecerão em missão até Outubro.

À partida para o Regimento de Infantaria 3 de Espinho, onde UnEng4 passará o próximo mês, o Tenente Coronel Alves Caetano disse: “Consideramos que a força está treinada, disciplinada e, apesar de um pouco cansada nesta altura, motivada”.

Hugo Coelho

04.08

Andy Warhol was no sailorman. Pablo Picasso no football player. And the blonde of Lichtenstein was no Fado singer. Still, they are in every mouth in Lisbon these days.

Sure you have heard about it even if not for the most artistic reasons: Lisbon city of football and Fado, nostalgic metropolis of a lost empire. But tradition is no more. These days the capital of Portugal is also the centre of contemporary art.

In the Belém district, there where the river meets the ocean and the Portuguese remember the heroes of maritime discoveries, Lisbon placed its new collection of contemporary pieces of art.

The Berardo Collection (Museum of Contemporary Art) gathers works of Bacon, Picasso, Mondrien, Dali and was compared to London’s Saatchi gallery.

The museum is the new face of the transformation going on around. The freed children of the April Revolution – the put down the fascist dictatorship with red carnations – are sweeping old town. And Lisbon is getting a new bohemian look.

Saturday night.

The sound of the accordion escapes the room beneath the white wooden door but the spell cast is all kept inside. In the last room of the tiled corridor of Fábrica do Braço de Prata (Factory of the Silver’s Arm), the characters of bohemian Lisbon enjoy the music of their new best-kept secret.

Indoors the scene is surreal. Mismatching iron-made tables and chairs, looking one hundred years old, share the space with hanging miscellanea imported from a never-happened past. The artist in the centre shows his smiling teeth not getting any younger as he stretches the boisterous French accordion. And the audience of no more than 40 boggling eyes gazes his washed-out sailor hat. Only the cat of glass in the table refuses to turn his head from me.

The Fábrica, to be one-year-old next month, is indisputably Lisbon’s most bizarre bookshop. The building, located in the abandoned East sector of the Portuguese capital, used to be a powder factory producing rifles, cannons and bullets for the armies of a decadent colonial empire. Nowadays, it crafts culture in industrial quantities.

There are books: 40 000 of them asking to be taken off, leafed through and talked about, in the shelves and tables of the room devoted to Nietzsche. There are also petite concerts, independent cinema showings or themed photo-shootings every evening from Wednesday to Sunday, around the other eleven rooms of the converted factory.

The first dozens of the Fábrica’s visitors, dissidents of the predictable Bairro Alto, ended up dragging here certain hundreds. “Today it is a meeting point for nameless artists daring to show their works and starving intellectual Lisbonners who want more than a drink when going out at night”, says José Pinho, one of the owners.

Saturday at sunrise.

For the vintage loving folks in Lisbon, the weekend starts in the legendary Feira de Ladra (Thieves’ Market) in old town.

The clock has yet to strike seven but already a large crowd gathers at the Campo de Santa Clara, in the East hill of Lisbon. Sellers are busy spreading out their wares on the warm flagstones yet but eager locals already wander around, peering at the displays If to bag the best bargains, it is worthy to arrive early.

The flea market got its name from the thieves that gathered here to shift their ill-gotten stuff. The market kept its ramshackle appearance and a shabby and laid-back style but today’s vendors seem to be a fairly honest bunch.

As the day moves along the bohemian wanderers of Lisbon gather at the esplanade of the hidden vantage point of Graça. The gothic twin towers of the Sé (Cathedral) in the west and the white dome of the Pantheom in the East frame the landscape of crammed and coloured walls and tiled roofs of the quarters of Graça and Alfama where white tower of St Michael’s church stands alone.

In Paris, the view would have driven the brush of some old man in Picasso’s hat. If the artist could help his eyes to find their way in the maze down there, he would sketch streets of half open doors with bag’s of fresh bread hanging in the locks and old women, wives and widows of fisherman, throwing water buckets down the streets or carrying baskets of dirty clothes to wash in the public basin.

The quarters of Alfama, Graça e Castelo, in the East hill, are Lisbon’s most typical ones. After the earthquake of 1755 and the reconstruction of the city according to the Parisian rules of Baron Haussman, those were the only quarters that kept their old medieval looks and old traditions.

These days, in the winding, steep, cobbled streets, the tolling bell of the church still marks the time. But the hours are not the same for everyone, anymore.

For the clowns and jugglers of Chapitô the day starts at 7:30 p.m. The bar and restaurant sited inside the walls of Lisbon’s city school, in Rua da Costa do Castelo, is a quirky island in the hill of the castle different from everything around. The place has a certain Moulin Rouge and cabaret air to it and is famous for the stylish multi-ethnic meals overlooking the river.

Smell of coffee.

After all, the Tagus is the essence of Lisbon. Europe’s most western capital has turned to the continent a long ago but its people can’t take their eyes from the river dying in the ocean.

There was a time when the waves brought stories of adventurous sailors, discoverers of half the word, and the smell to Asian spices and gold and diamonds from Africa and Brazil.

The smell of coffee still lives in high ceilings and stonewalls of trendy Pois Café, in Rua São João da Praça. The café occupies what once was a warehouse of spices and it keeps an inebriant ambiance that makes costumers to lost track of time. The old maps pasted in every table, help them to travel all around the world.

It is worth to know, that in the great days of the Empire, the Portuguese felt like they owned the world – they agreed with the Spanish on a line dividing the globe and each one’s share in it.

The waterfront square of Terreiro do Paço, where the Palace of Paço was located, was the symbol of power of that lost empire. Nowadays, its ruins lay below the yellow ministries of the Republica. But Lisbon still lives the memory of those gone glittering times.

The lesson of a poet.

The buildings and shops in modern façades and the black patterns in the white sidewalk of Rua Augusta cast a spell that makes you feel like travelling back in time.

The journey to the past stops somewhere around 1800, at Travellers House, in the first floor of number 89. The walls are 200 years old, but the decoration and international mood are modern enough to make it to be voted world’s best hostel.

The time is set forward as the iron lift of Santa Justa appears on the left. It was an apprentice of Gustave Eiffel, the architect of Eiffel Tower, who designed the world’s unique public elevator.
The lift takes passengers up to the Chiado district, with a cracking sound from the end of the nineteenth century. These were times of political change and Chiado’s famous cafes and esplanades, once artistic and intellectual centres, tell stories of writers and revolutionaries.

On the top of Rua Garrett, there is the famous bohemian café, Brasileira. Here revolutions were planned, literature discussed and poems written.

Rarely are there any empty chairs in the esplanade, but among the changing crowds, there is one costumer that stays and gleams. His leg is always crossed and his eyes always travelling down the street. The bronze statue of Fernando Pessoa, modern Portuguese poet, catches all the attentions.

Pessoa created and wrote under 72 alter-egos, most of them with a date of birth and death, lovers and address. All he needed to hand to write was a black coffee, absinthe and endless cigarettes.

He was arguably the most influential poet of modernism but surely one of Lisbon’s most bohemian and stirring characters. Maybe that is why what he said for himself goes well together with Lisbon’s new face.

“If after my death you want to write my biography, it is very simple thing to do. It has but two dates – my birth and my death. The days in between, they are mine”-

Going Further
They are whining all the time about it, but Lisbonners are really proud of their city.
You will hear often from their mouth: “Lisbon is Portugal, the rest is its landscape”.
Landscape or not, even they like to roam around town and it is well worthy to follow their trail.

Beach all year long
Lisbonners can’t live without beach and sea and all around the year, they go to south bank’s beaches of Caparica. The beach here extends for more 30 miles.
Walk along it and sit down watching the crowds of surfers if you want to experience laid back Portuguese way of life.

Romance in Sintra
Lord Byron compared it to paradise and surely not without reason. Less than 20 minutes away, gloomy Sintra is centre of European Romantic Architecture.
It is well worth it to climb the mountain to the ruined medieval Mourish Castle and to the romantic pink Palace of Pena.
As the sun goes down go back to the village to taste well-known Sintra’s muffin (queijada) at Piriquita.

The Eden of posh shoppers
A short journey to the west of Lisbon brings the visitor to the upper-class town of
Cascais.
Its people are said to be the prettiest in the region, which together with the old aristocratic houses give the town a sense of glamour.
Cascais is also famous for its posh shops and romantic esplanades looking over secret beaches.

Lisbon in a nutshell

Travellers House – single-beds from £16.71
Rua Augusta nº89 1st floor

Easyjet flies from Bristol, Liverpool, Luton and Gatwick to Lisbon from  £19.99
www.easyjet.com

Short breaks to Lisbon with Original Travel from £335 http://www.originaltravel.co.uk/ Phone. 020 797 873 33

Lisbon Walkers – tours in Alfama and Baixa from £12. www.lisbonwalkers.org

Hugo Coelho & Deny Extremera
Published in London Out Loud
03.08

Jessica promised amazing girls for £5 and private dancers for £10. It sounded like the bargain of the night.

Her beauty made Soho look like paradise and lured us in.

She turned out to be the hook, and we were the perfect fish.

Market for debauchery

We were looking for a story. And Jessica was not the first to offer us forbidden “delights” that night. ‘Exotic’ girls (read from any ethnic background), marijuana, hashish and cocaine were all on offer. All we had to do was ask.

“Looking for girls? I have some just around the corner. They are clean, they don’t do the streets.” We heard these words over and over again.

We wanted to talk to a girl, but talk’s cheap and wasn’t on sale that night. What was being sold, however, was a show for £30, or “£35 for a blow job, £40 if you want positions.”

Open-minded…and unpredictable

So there we were, negotiating, terrified but intrigued by the temptation pretty, blonde Jessica offered.

Can we talk to a girl while she is dancing for us? “Yes,” she answered. Is it only £10? “Yes.” Can we ask you to dance for us? “Yes.”

Until this point, our evening had been very ordinary. Earlier, we had met up with Sergio and Arturo, who frequent Soho’s gay bars and clubs.

“Soho’s great! Specially because it’s not just a gay zone. Many straight people come here, especially girls who feel safe in gay bars,” Sergio said.

Ironically, a couple of Spanish tourists we spoke to later couldn’t get out of the place fast enough, once they realised they were in a gay bar.

Beware of clip joints

Getting back to Jessica and her promise of giving us a good time, we paid her £5 and were soon sitting in a dark little room. Another blonde kept us company while a beautiful brunette served us to rather tasteless beer.

Then we asked Jessica to deliver on her promise of a private dance. And that’s when things got ugly.

The blonde’s smile vanished and she demanded £35 more despite the bargain we had struck. She also asked for £200 for “further services”.

Our refusal to pay more money translated into a trip back to the reception where a grumpy Madame demanded that we pull out some more money and search our pockets and wallets, while a huge bouncer breathed down our necks.

We were lucky to get away only £20 poorer.

Our experience is not dissimilar to those experienced by other man trapped in ‘clip joints’.

A recent article in The Independent talked about “stories abound of men having their wallets emptied or being marched to cash machines by bouncers and forced to hand over £500 for a couple of soft drinks and a 20 minute chat with a scantily clad young hostess.”

Incidentally, last year, councils sent text messages to warn unsuspecting customers of Soho’s treacheries.

The message from Westminster City Council read: “£5 to get in, £500 to get out. Criminals operate some of the hostess bars in Soho. Don’t enter without knowing what you’ll get for your money.”

We got the message the hard way.

Hugo Coelho
Published in London Out Loud
03.08

The mystery surrounding the identity of the British graffiti artist is as intriguing as his work.

Banksy has a lot in common with a certain pointy-eared caped-crusaders. Like him, the graffiti artist strives to keep his identity a secret and like him, he wants to save the world.

This time round, the guerrilla artist has taken to campaigning for the anti-plastic bag lobby. Read the rest of this entry »