Brazil's president apologizes for slavery

It's over 12 hours old, so not LBN.

http://www.dawn.com/2005/04/16/int9.htm

"GOREE ISLAND, April 15: President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva apologized on Thursday for Brazil's role in slavery during a visit to Senegal's Goree Island, where Africans were shipped from a red-brick Slave House to a life of toil.

" "I want to tell you ... that I had no responsibility for what happened in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries but I ask your forgiveness for what we did to black people," Mr Lula said, speaking from a balcony in the Slave House.

"Brazil imported the most African slaves of any country in the world and was the last to abolish slavery in 1888. About 46 per cent of Brazil's 180 million people define themselves as "black" or "pardo" - a loose definition including virtually all dark shades of skin - meaning the country has the world's second largest black population after Nigeria. "