Luanda – The resident coordinator of the United Nations in Angola Zahira Virani praised Wednesday in Luanda the performance of the Angolan Government for the pacification of Central Africa and the Great Lakes Region.
Zahira Virani expressed this position at the meeting of representatives and special envoys of the UN Secretary General in Central Africa, which goes until Thursday in the Angolan capital.
The United Nations official said it was crucial to encourage everyone to maintain dialogue, find joint and coordinated solutions to the peace, security and stability in the region.
She added that the meeting of the highest representatives of the UN secretary general for Central Africa and the Great Lakes, in Luanda, is a recognition of Angolan leadership in peace and reconciliation processes in Africa.
The Angolan Minister of Foreign Affairs Teté António, who also attended the meeting, said he hoped that the meeting would contribute to a greater engagement of the United Nations in the search for peace in the region and on the African continent.
The Angolan top diplomat hopes that meetings of this kind will happen again and it will become a true mechanism of coordination and permanent consultation for the noblest causes of the African peoples, such as world peace and stability.
Teté António exhorted the spirit of unity in the search for solutions to lasting peace in several parts of the continent, combining the trilogy of peace, development and human rights.
The meeting is also attended by representatives of the UN secretary general for Central Africa, Abdou Abarry, and the Great Lakes Region, Huang Xia.
Last by not least the special representatives of the secretary general of the organisation for the Central African Republic, Valentine Rugwa, and for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Bintou Keita.
Local official says at least 15 people were killed and 20 others wounded in a bombing at a religious school in northern Afghanistan.
Several students are among at least 15 people killed in a bomb blast at a religious school in northern Afghanistan’s Samangan province, according to a local official.
Provincial spokesman Emdadullah Muhajir added that at least 20 others were also wounded in the explosion in the school in Aybak, the capital of Samangan, on Wednesday.
“A blast took place around 12:45pm inside Jahdia Madrasa in the centre of the city. Lots of boys are studying at this madrasa [religious school],” he said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Muhajir said an investigation had begun.
The federal interior ministry spokesperson Abdul Nafi Takor confirmed the blast but put the death toll so far at 10, with more injured.
“Our detective and security forces are working to identify the perpetrators of this unforgivable crime and bring them to justice,” Takor said.
A doctor in Aybak, about 200km (124 miles) north of the national capital Kabul, said the casualties were mostly youngsters.
“All of them are children and ordinary people,” he told the AFP news agency, asking not to be named.
Images and videos circulating on social media – which could not immediately be verified – showed officials picking their way through bodies strewn across the floor of a building.
Prayer mats, shattered glass and other debris littered the scene.
The Taliban has said it is focused on securing the war-torn nation since taking over the country last year.
However, several attacks have taken place in recent months, some of which have been claimed by the ISIL (ISIS) armed group.
Obaidullah Baheer, who teaches at the American University of Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera that people are shaken by the attack.
“It is just so senseless, most of these people, the casualties, are children. This is a religious school. So, it defies logic and it is evil,” he said.
“It is just meant to spread fear. It is to show that no one is safe. It’s to show that they will hit and the ultimate goal of terror is spreading terror and that’s what they are achieving to do.”
Aybak is a small but ancient provincial capital that came to prominence as a caravan-stopping post for traders during the fourth and fifth centuries when it was also an important Buddhist centre.
‘Aimed at destabilising the country’
There has been a lull of a few weeks between major blasts targeting civilians in Afghanistan, although several Taliban fighters have been killed in isolated attacks.
In September, at least 54 people – including 51 girls and young women – were killed when a suicide bomber detonated a device at a hall in Kabul packed with hundreds of students sitting a practice test for university admissions.
No group claimed responsibility for that bombing, but the Taliban later blamed the ISIL and said it had killed several ringleaders.
In May last year, before the Taliban’s return to power, at least 85 people – mainly girls – were killed and about 300 were wounded when three bombs exploded near their school in the neighbourhood.
No group claimed responsibility, but a year earlier ISIL claimed a suicide attack on an educational centre in the area that killed 24.
The Taliban has pledged to protect the country’s minorities and clamp down on security threats.
Faiz Zaland from Kabul University said the blast was aimed at destabilising the country and attacking the Taliban’s stronghold over security.
“Unfortunately, it’s not the first time that a madrasa or a Taliban post has been attacked in the past 15 months. There were several big attacks on madrasas like in Mazar-e-Sharif, Balkh and Kunduz provinces, but it’s the first time in Samangan province.
“Madrasas are the main centres of recruitment for the Taliban,” Zaland told Al Jazeera from Istanbul.
“The religious schools are also strongholds of Taliban leadership at the provincial level. They are affiliated with the local Taliban governor or police chief. So the attack on the madrasa is a way to challenge the Taliban’s control over security.”
The 19 high-profile defendants in the ‘hidden debt’ case are accused of a wide range of financial crimes connected to illicit state-backed loans.
A court in Mozambique has begun handing down verdicts in the country’s biggest corruption scandal, in which the government unleashed a financial earthquake by trying to conceal huge debts.
The 19 high-profile defendants, who include former state security officials and the son of an ex-president, faced charges ranging from money laundering to bribery and blackmail related to a $2bn “hidden debt” scandal that crashed the nation’s economy.
Judge Efigenio Baptista of the Maputo City Court said on Wednesday that reading the 1,388 page judgement was likely to take five days. The trial, which started in August last year, ran until March.
All the accused, who were present in court on Wednesday, have denied any wrongdoing.
The scandal arose after state-owned companies in the impoverished country illicitly borrowed $2bn in 2013 and 2014 from international banks to buy a tuna-fishing fleet and surveillance vessels. The government masked the loans from parliament and the public.
When the “hidden debt” finally surfaced in 2016, donors including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut off financial support, triggering a sovereign debt default and currency collapse.
An independent audit found $500m of the loans had been diverted. The money remains unaccounted for.
Former Finance Minister Manuel Chang – who signed off the loans – has been held in South Africa since 2018, pending extradition to the United States for allegedly using the US financial system to carry out the fraudulent scheme.
Former President Armando Guebuza, who was in office when the loans were contracted, testified at the trial. He was not charged himself, but his eldest son Ndambi was in the dock along with the 18 other defendants.
‘Corruption doesn’t pay off’
About 100 people sat in the special courtroom, set up in a white marquee on the grounds of a high-security jail in Maputo to accommodate the large number of defendants, their lawyers and other parties, the AFP news agency reported.
“I think for the public has been very important trial,” Denise Namburete, the founder of the non-profit N’weti and a member of the Mozambique Budget Monitoring Forum, a coalition of civil society organisations, told Al Jazeera from Maputo. “It has been naturally the first time that the public … see high level government officials being indicted and judged at court.”
“It sends out the message that high level government officials can be held to account. It also sends the message that corruption doesn’t pay off. And at the end of the day, I think it is an opportunity for Mozambique to restore trust in the judicial system,” she added.
Anti-corruption activists are also calling for tough sentences.
“The conviction must be strong enough so that it is not annulled or significantly reduced in a second instance court,” Borges Nhamirre, a researcher at the anti-corruption non-profit watchdog Public Integrity Center, told AFP. But Adriano Nuvunga, the head of a rights group called the Centre for Democracy and Development, predicted the sentences would be “politically rigged”.
Namburete told Al Jazeera: “I think there is an understanding that this is a political trial,” adding, “Unfortunately, we’ve only seen 19 defendants being indicted but there were many more people involved in this case that weren’t indicted and we probably will not see that justice made in regard to these people.”
There is growing outrage in Nigeria over the arrest of a university student by security operatives after he allegedly defamed the wife of President Muhammadu Buhari in a Twitter post.
Aminu Adamu Mohammed has now been remanded in prison, his lawyer, Chijioke Kingsley Agu, has told the BBC.
He said his client was charged at a high court in the Maitama district in the capital, Abuja, on Tuesday.
The student denied the one-count charge of criminal defamation.
His lawyer said a bail application had been filed that he hoped would be considered within the next 48 hours.
The 23-year-old student was reportedly arrested earlier this month after he allegedly posted a picture of Nigeria’s First Lady Aisha Buhari with a comment in the Hausa language suggesting that she had grown fat after misspending public money.
The prosecution accused him of spreading false information.
Mr Mohammed’s parents have publicly implored Mrs Buhari to forgive their son. She has not yet commented.
The undergraduate is due to start his final exams next Monday along with his classmates. It is not yet clear whether he will be released so that he can do so.
Social media users and rights campaigners have criticised the Nigerian authorities for the treatment of the student and called for his immediate release.
Some say Nigerian officials are becoming increasingly intolerant of criticism.
Earlier this month two young TikTok users were fined and flogged in public after a court found them guilty of defaming the governor of the northern state of Kano in a video shared on social media.
The Respect for Marriage Act now returns to the Democratic-led US House of Representatives for a final vote.
The United States Senate has voted 61 to 36 to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, a bill that would enshrine protections for same-sex and interracial marriages in federal law.
Twelve Republicans joined the 49 Democrats present in supporting the landmark piece of legislation, which prohibits states from denying “out-of-state marriages on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity or national origin”.
The bill also “repeals and replaces” any federal language that defines marriage as between individuals of the opposite sex.
Tuesday’s bipartisan victory comes in the final weeks of the Democratic-controlled Congress. The bill now returns to the House of Representatives, which is slated to shift to Republican leadership when the 118th Congress is sworn in on January 3.
In a speech minutes before the vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, applauded the bill’s bipartisan support, saying he planned to call his daughter and her wife to celebrate.
“For millions of Americans, today is a very good day. An important day. A day that’s been a long time in coming,” Schumer said.
“The long but inexorable march towards greater equality advances forward. By passing this bill, the Senate is sending a message that every American needs to hear: No matter who you are or who you love, you too deserve dignity and equal treatment under the law.”
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gathers with Democrats for a news conference ahead of Tuesday’s vote on the Respect for Marriage Act [Sarah Silbiger/Reuters]
But in the hours before Tuesday’s vote, Senate Republicans like James Lankford of Oklahoma raised fears the Respect for Marriage Act would curtain religious freedom in the US and proposed additional amendments to the bill.
“Is today about respecting the rights of all, or is it about silencing some and respecting others?” Lankford said.
A Gallup poll showed that support for same-sex marriage in the US had hit a record high of 70 percent in 2021. It was also the first time Gallup recorded a majority of Republicans in favour of same-sex marriage, at a rate of 55 percent.
“Current federal law does not reflect the will or beliefs of the American people in this regard,” Ohio Republican Rob Portman said in a speech in support of the Respect for Marriage Act on November 16. “The current statute allows states and governments to refuse valid same-sex marriages.”
Since 2015, the Supreme Court decision Obergefell v Hodges has guaranteed the right for same-sex couples to marry. But laws like the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act — which defined marriage as between “one man and one woman” and denied federal recognition to same-sex couples — remained on the books, though unenforceable.
While the Respect for Marriage Act would not codify the Obergefell ruling, it would repeal laws like the Defense of Marriage Act. It would also mandate that states recognise all marriages that were legal where they were performed and protect current same-sex unions.
The current push to pass the Respect for Marriage Act came in the wake of June’s Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned a half-century of protections for abortion access.
In a Senate session on Monday, Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden pointed to the Dobbs decision as motivation to vote in favour of the bill.
“Some members of this body have questioned why we need to pass this bill when marriage equality is the law of the land,” Wyden said. “The answer is pretty straightforward. The Dobbs ruling, which overturned Roe versus Wade, showed that the Senate cannot take any modern legal precedent for granted.”
The majority opinion in the Dobbs decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, denied that the ruling would affect court precedents outside of abortion.
But a concurring opinion, submitted by Justice Clarence Thomas, suggested the court should “reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents”, naming the 2015 Obergefell decision among them.
On July 19, just weeks following the Dobbs decision, House Democrats passed the Respect for Marriage Act with the support of 47 Republicans – a surprise bipartisan vote that signalled an apparent split in Republicans’ stance towards same-sex marriage.
Top House Republicans, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Whip Steve Scalise, opposed the bill, while the number-three Republican, New York’s Elise Stefanik, voted in favour.
US Senator Susan Collins, seen on Tuesday, was among the Republicans to vote for the Respect for Marriage Act
After passing the House, the Respect for Marriage Act faced steeper odds in the evenly split Senate, where 60 votes were needed to overcome a filibuster.
Senate Democrats delayed a vote on the bill until after the US held its midterm elections in an effort to relieve pressure on Republicans and garner greater bipartisan support. Republicans pushed for multiple amendments to be made to the bill on the grounds of protecting religious liberty.
The bill that passed on Tuesday included language that explicitly prohibited polygamous marriages and ensured the bill cannot be used to target or deny government benefits, including tax-exempt status, based on religious belief. In a test vote on Monday, 12 Republicans joined the Senate Democrats in voting in favour of the amended bill.
Religious groups also offered support for the bill, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), which applauded the bill for its “religious freedom protections while respecting the law and preserving the rights of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters”.
“It’s notable that the Senate is having this debate to begin with,” Schumer said on Monday. “A decade ago, it would have strained all of our imaginations to envision both sides talking about protecting the rights of same-sex married couples.”
But Tuesday’s vote was preceded by further proposed amendments to the bill, from Senators including Lankford and Florida’s Marco Rubio.
Portman, a fellow Republican, urged his party on Tuesday to support the Respect for Marriage Act. He dismissed as “false” concerns the bill would make “institutions and individuals trying to live according to their sincerely held beliefs” vulnerable to litigation.
The bill, Portman said, “reflects a national policy that respects diverse beliefs about the role of gender and marriage, while also protecting the rights of same-sex marriage couples”.
Another Republican, Wyoming’s Cynthia Lummis, told the Senate that, while she believes “God’s word as to the definition of marriage”, she would support the Respect for Marriage Act.
“These are turbulent times for our nation,” Lummis said, citing an increase in heated rhetoric. “We do well by taking this step, not embracing or validating each other’s devoutly held views, but by the simple act of tolerating them.”
