MPLA and South Africa’s ANC strengthen cooperation ties

 Cape Town - The vice-president of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party, Luísa Damião, highlighted Monday the historical and cooperation ties it shares with South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC).

Speaking to the press after a meeting with the ANC leader, Geraldine Moleketi, the vice-president of Angola’s ruling MPLA underlined the fact that the two political forces defend the same ideals.

The Angolan politician underlined that the ideals of peace, development and social justice dominated the gathering held in Cape Town, South Africa, an encounter that took place  on the fringes of the African Peer Review Mechanism.

 

“We have just had a meeting with a sister party, the ANC, with which we have long-standing historical ties", said the MPLA vice-president.

 

"The liberation history of South Africa has the support of the MPLA. We thank the vice-president for coming, personally, once again to our country", Geraldine Moleketi stressed.

 

She recalled that the historical relations between the MPLA and ANC date back to the time of Angola’s first president, Agostinho Neto.

 

The meeting also counted on the presence of other ANC members namely, Yonda Maverula, of the International Relations Committee, and Eddy Maloca, of the continental secretariat of the African Peer Review Mechanism.

 

MPLA's strategic role

 

The Deputy Speaker of South Africa Parliament, Solomon Leeches Tsenoli, added  that the MPLA will play an important role in the mechanism, for being a party with history in the region.

 

To the South African politician, the MPLA will be able to assist as a peace facilitator and in the internal and external dynamism of the African Peer Review Mechanism.

 

The event, which runs until Tuesday in Cape Town, brings together several African political parties.

 

The African Peer Review Mechanism is an instrument set up by the African Union in 2003, consisting of 36 countries, to assess member countries on democracy and governance.

OPEC has new president

 Luanda - The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) unanimously elected Equatorial Guinean politician, Gabriel M. Obiang Nguema Lima, as president of the cartel for the year 2023, in the scope of the rotating presidency.

The new president of the organisation is minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons of Equatorial Guinea.

 

According to a press release to which ANGOP had access today, the act took place by video-conference at the 34th Ministerial Meeting of OPEC+, held on Sunday, 4 December.

 

The participants reaffirmed the decision of the 10th OPEC+ Ministerial Meeting, held on 12 April 2020, and, subsequently supported in subsequent meetings, including the 19th OPEC+ Ministerial Meeting of 18 July 2021, and the 33rd OPEC+ Ministerial Meeting held on 5 October 2022, which maintained the cuts in oil production.

 

The document highlights that the OPEC+ decision includes adjusting the frequency of monthly meetings to become bimonthly for the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) and the JMMC´s authority to hold additional meetings or request an OPEC+ Ministerial meeting at any time to address market developments if necessary.

 

They also reiterated the crucial importance of joining the full compensation and compliance mechanism, taking advantage of the extension approved at the 33rd OPEC+ Ministerial Meeting and scheduled the 35th OPEC+ Ministerial Meeting for 4 July 2023.

 

Equatorial Guinea will hold the OPEC presidency in 2023, taking over the rotating presidency that was held by another African country, the Republic of Congo.

 

OPEC is an organisation that represents the interests of 13 oil exporting countries: Algeria, Angola, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

Police hunt MPs who attacked female colleague

 Police in Senegal are searching for two opposition lawmakers who attacked a female MP during a brawl in parliament last week.

Massata Samb slapped Amy Ndiaye, and Mamadou Niang kicked her in the stomach during a justice ministry budget vote on Thursday.

Ms Ndiaye then threw a chair at Mr Samb before the speaker suspended proceedings.

Prosecutors in Dakar have launched proceedings against the two male MPs.

The violence in parliament was widely condemned in Senegal, and came during an annual UN-backed awareness campaign about violence against women and girls.

By Will Ross

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EU, Western Balkans leaders meet amid fears of Russian influence

 EU aims to reassure six Balkan countries of a future in the bloc amid fears of rising Russian and Chinese influence.

European Union and Western Balkans leaders have met in the Albanian capital Tirana for a summit meant to reassure the region of a future in the wealthy bloc amid fears of rising Russian and Chinese influence.

The leaders of the six Balkan countries of Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia have long expressed disillusion that negotiations have not started or are stalled, years after being promised eventual EU membership.

While reluctance over further enlarging the EU is rife among member states, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed them to focus more energy on bringing the region closer to the bloc.

“I am absolutely convinced that the future of our children will be safer and more prosperous with the Western Balkans within the EU and we are working very hard to make progress,” EU Council chief Charles Michel said at the start of Tuesday’s meeting.

In a concrete step towards integration, telecommunications operators from the EU and the six Western Balkans leaders signed a deal on Tuesday morning, at the start of the summit, on a cut in data roaming charges from October 2023.

While some of the Balkans leaders welcomed that step, they also stressed they wanted more.

“Kosovo will be submitting its application for EU membership by the end of this year,” its president, Vjosa Osmani-Sadriu, said as she arrived at the summit, stressing that she hopes an EU summit next week will approve visa liberalisation for Kosovo.

Old tensions within the region were also clear as she criticised Serbia’s attitude and said Kosovo was “100 percent aligned” with EU views.

“Whether you stand with Ukraine today or you stand with Russia should matter, whether you have sanctions against Russia or not should matter,” Osmani-Sadriu said.

Meanwhile, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said as he arrived at the summit: “Is Serbia too close to Russia? Serbia is an independent country.”

Serbia, he said is “on the EU path and that will remain so”, but also needs to defend its own interests.

The EU’s aim is to give greater stability to a region that emerged from the break-up of Yugoslavia and the ethnic wars of the 1990s but is still racked by tensions.

But moves towards closer integration are also designed to deny Moscow a gateway for causing trouble at what is seen as a soft spot on the 27-nation EU’s southeastern flank.

Serbia in particular, which was bombed by NATO 20 years ago, has long struggled to balance historically close ties with Russia against aspirations for economic and political integration with the West.

EU leaders will also push their Balkans counterparts to be more forceful in implementing EU standards such as the rule of law, gender equality, the protection of minorities and the fight against corruption and organised crime, while aligning with EU policies such as the sanctions on Russia.

At the same time, the EU has been working hard to plug what it sees as loopholes in the visa regimes of several Balkans countries that have helped boost the number of asylum seekers crossing into the bloc.

SOURCE: REUTERS

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Putin Signs Law Banning Expressions of L.G.B.T.Q. Identity in Russia

 The law makes it illegal to spread “propaganda” about “nontraditional sexual relations” in all media, including social, advertising and movies.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia intensified his crackdown on L.G.B.T.Q. people on Monday, when he signed new legislation that widely bans public expression of their identity in the country.

The new law makes it illegal to spread “propaganda” about “nontraditional sexual relations” in the media, advertising, movies or on social media. It had passed the Duma, Russia’s Parliament, by a vote of 397 to 0 on Nov. 24.

Demonstrations of “nontraditional relationships or preferences” will also be completely barred from advertising, and from any outlet visible to minors. Distributing to minors any information “that causes children to want to change their sex” was also prohibited.

The law is likely to put another strain on a community that has already been largely stigmatized in a country where officials have cast the repression of L.G.B.T.Q. expression as part of a wider struggle to protect Russia from Western interference.

Mr. Putin has long cast L.G.B.T.Q. life as a Western intrusion into Russia’s traditional society and values, and proponents of the new law recently likened the fight against L.G.B.T.Q. expression to Russia’s military actions in Ukraine, which they see as a broader civilization clash between them and the West.

“We have our own way of development, we do not need European imposition of nontraditional relations,” Nina Ostanina, chairwoman of the committee on family, women and children, said during parliamentary hearings on the legislation.

Russia has banned “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” among minors since 2013, with steep fines or suspension of business activities for Russians, and expulsion from the country for foreigners who were found guilty. The new law extends the ban on such propaganda to all adults.

Since 2013, just over 100 cases ended up in court, according to an analysis by a Russian lawyer, Maksim Olenichev, but experts said its biggest impact was casting the community as inappropriate, making it more invisible and subject to abuses. The new law is likely to push the L.G.B.T.Q. community further underground, its opponents said.

The new law also contains a ban on propaganda for pedophilia, and a leading independent news site, Meduza, said the combination “looks like an attempt to put homosexuality and pedophilia in the same row.”

“The ban on ‘L.G.B.T. propaganda’ is a big problem,” Alena Popova, a human-rights activist told the group Coming Out. “Now this vulnerable group is in an even more vulnerable position.”

It is unclear what the word “propaganda” means in the context of the law, but the 2013 law said it took the form of “dissemination of information aimed at the formation of nontraditional sexual attitudes among minors.” Imposition of information about these relationships “that arouses interest in such relations” also amounted to propaganda, the law said, as did spreading the “distorted idea of ​​the social equivalence of traditional and nontraditional sexual relations.”

Fines for “propaganda” of nontraditional sexual relations or preferences can rise to about $6,400 for citizens and $80,000 for organizations.

Roskomnadzor, Russia’s powerful internet regulator, will monitor the internet to identify information and programs that are affected by the ban on L.G.B.T.Q. “propaganda” and pedophilia, according to the Russian state-run news agency Tass.

The law also forbids the issuance of a rental or streaming certificate for films with materials that promote nontraditional sexual relations and preferences.

Even before the legislation was signed, Russians in the L.G.B.T. Q. community feared that it might make it harder for them to continue living in a country that is muting the expression of political and social views and personal identities of which the Kremlin disapproves.

By Emma Bubola

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Former Brazilian Striker Adriano Faces Divorce After Just Twenty-Four Days of Marriage

 Former Brazil star Adriano has reportedly split from his wife Micaela Mesquita after just 24 days of marriage because he ‘disappeared for two days to watch the World Cup’.

The 40-year-old, who is said to have splashed out £13,000 on 18 prostitutes to cope with the disappointment of his failed transfer to French side Le Havre in 2015, tied the knot last month.

The couple had initially planned to get married on November 30 but decided to move the wedding forward and shared pictures of themselves signing official papers on Instagram.

However, there is said to be trouble in paradise. According to Extra, the couple have broken up following a row over the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Read Full Story …. Dailymail.co.uk >>> :   

Source: Dailymail.co.uk

 

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N Korea orders new artillery fire over US-S Korea drills

 Order comes a day after North Korea said it fired more than 130 shells into the sea off its east and west coasts.

North Korea’s military has ordered front-line units to fire artillery into the sea for a second consecutive day in what it called a response to drills by the United States and South Korean forces in an inland border region.

The order on Tuesday came a day after North Korea fired about 130 artillery rounds into waters near its western and eastern sea boundaries with South Korea.

A spokesman for the North Korean military said the latest planned artillery barrage was meant as a “strong warning” to Seoul and was in response to signs of South Korean artillery exercises in the border region.

The official called on Seoul to immediately stop its “provocative” military actions.

The South Korean and United States militaries are currently conducting live-fire exercises involving multiple rocket launching systems and howitzers in two separate testing grounds in the Cheorwon region, which began on Monday and will continue until Wednesday.

The allies say the drills are necessary to deter nuclear-armed North Korea, which tested a record number of missiles this year and has made preparations to resume nuclear testing for the first time since 2017.

On the day the exercises started, North Korea’s military said it detected dozens of South Korean projectiles flying southeast from the Cheorwon region and instructed its western and eastern coastal units to fire artillery as a warning.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said those shells that North Korea fired fell within the northern side of buffer zones created under a 2018 inter-Korean agreement to reduce military tensions and urged Pyongyang to abide by the agreement.

It was the first time North Korea had fired weapons into the maritime buffer zones since November 3, when about 80 artillery shells landed within the North Korean side of the zone off its eastern coast.

In addition to the artillery fire, North Korea has launched dozens of missiles this year, including multiple tests of an intercontinental ballistic missile system potentially capable of reaching the US mainland.

North Korea has also conducted a series of short-range launches it described as simulated nuclear attacks on South Korean and US targets in an angry reaction to an expansion of joint US-South Korea military exercises that North Korea views as rehearsals for a potential invasion.

Experts say North Korea hopes to negotiate economic and security concessions from a position of strength and force the US to accept it as a nuclear power.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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