UN's Portuguese news telephone number is legit

An article in Publico from yesterday claims that a Portuguese-language telephone service has been set up by the UN, following English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Swahili, Russian, and Spanish (probably not in that order).

It said the phone number for the service is 1 (712) 432-9917, so naturally I dialed it to try it out and it works. It begins with a guy talking in Brazilian Portuguese, then asks what sort of news you want to hear. I selected 2 for African news to hopefully get a non-Brazilian accent, which I got, but the other numbers also feature various accents so it really is pan-lusitanian in the type of Portuguese you get.

There is of course no particular advantage to listening this way over a live stream if using Gmail like I did, but it was fun. And if your telephone service gives you free calls to Idaho then maybe adding this or one of the other telephone numbers to your address book would give you something to listen to in a free moment in a lineup, on the train, waiting for someone to finish getting ready, etc.



Edit: found the rest of the numbers.

Arabic: +1 (712) 432-9912
Chinese: +1 (712) 432-9911
French: +1 (712) 432-9913
Kiswahili: +1 (712) 432-9916
Russian: +1 (712) 432-9914
Spanish: +1 (712) 432-9915