(Al Jazeera Media Network) Minutes after Gabon’s electoral commission announced on Wednesday that President Ali Bongo Ondimba had won a third term in office, senior military officers announced a coup and annulled the election results.
According to local media reports, Brice Clothaire Oligui Nguema, the commander-in-chief of the Gabonese Republican Guard – the country’s most powerful security unit – and a cousin to Bongo, is the ringleader of the attempted coup.
Nguema is one of the...
(Al Jazeera Media Network) Police in Nigeria said Tuesday they detained at least 67 people celebrating a gay wedding, in one of the country’s largest arrests targeting outlawed homosexuality.
The “gay suspects” were arrested in southern Delta state’s Ekpan town at about 2 a.m. (01:00 GMT) on Monday at an event where two of them were wedded, state police spokesman Bright Edafe told reporters. He added that homosexuality “will never be tolerated” in the West...
(Al Jazeera Media Network) France will ban children from wearing the abaya – the loose-fitting, full-length robe worn by some Muslim women – in state-run schools, the country’s education minister has said ahead of the back-to-school season.
France, which has enforced a strict ban on religious signs in state schools since 19th-century laws removed any traditional Catholic influence from public education, has struggled to update guidelines to deal with a growing Muslim minority.
French public schools...
(BBC News) The Taliban government has banned women from visiting the Band-e-Amir national park in Bamiyan province.
Afghanistan's acting minister of virtue and vice Mohammad Khaled Hanafi said women had not been observing hijab inside the park.
He called on religious clerics and security agencies to forbid women from entering until a solution was found.
Band-e-Amir is a significant tourist attraction, becoming Afghanistan's first national park in 2009.
It is a popular destination for families, and the ban on women...
(BBC News) President Vladimir Putin has called on all employees of Wagner and other Russian private military contractors to take an oath of allegiance to the Russian state.
The decree applies to anyone participating in military activities in Ukraine, assisting the army and serving in territorial defence units.
He signed the decree on Friday, with immediate effect.
It comes two days after Wagner leaders were presumed killed in a plane crash.
In a separate development on Saturday, a...
(BBC News) Japan has begun its controversial discharge of treated waste water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean, sparking protests in the region and retaliation from Beijing.
China is the biggest buyer of seafood from Japan, and on Thursday it said it would block all such imports.
Japan says the water is safe, and many scientists agree. The UN's nuclear watchdog has approved the plan.
But critics say more studies need to be done...
(Al Jazeera Media Network) Pavel Felgenhauer, a defence and military analyst, tells Al Jazeera that if Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death is confirmed, that means the mercenary company is “decapitated.”
“Prigozhin was their political leader and financial backer, but also their main military commander. (Right-hand man Dimitry) Utkin was also on that plane,” he said.
He added that if the deaths are confirmed, then “that means they have lost their financial leader, their political leader, and their military...
(Al Jazeera Media Network) Sudanese military factions battled for a third day over an army base in the capital, witnesses have said, as both sides struggle for advantage in a war that has raged for more than four months.
After the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) circulated video of its soldiers claiming to have entered the base and captured tanks, army sources on Tuesday said they had managed to drive them out.
If the army were...
(Al Jazeera Media Network) Anti-corruption crusader Bernardo Arevalo has scored a landslide victory in Guatemala’s presidential election, after voters angry at successive leaders’ failure to tackle widespread corruption made a decisive choice for change.
With 98 percent of ballots counted, Arevalo had 58 percent of votes, with his rival Sandra Torres trailing on 36 percent, according to a count by the TSE national election body.
Blanca Alfaro, the judge who heads the TSE, said Arevalo of...
(BBC News) Russia's unmanned Luna-25 spacecraft has crashed into the Moon after spinning out of control, officials say.
It was Russia's first Moon mission in almost 50 years.
The craft was due to be the first ever to land on the Moon's south pole, but failed after encountering problems as it moved into its pre-landing orbit.
It was set to explore a part of the Moon that scientists think could hold frozen water and precious elements.
Roscosmos, Russia's...
