A Ghanaian parliamentary committee has commenced a public hearing into a controversial anti-gay bill.
The bill proposes a five-year jail term for lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and a 10-year term for promoters and advocates of the group.
The group argues that the bill is unconstitutional because it violates the rights of the LGBT community. But the Ghana Pentecostal Council says it reflects the will of many Ghanaians.
Other groups including Amnesty International and the UN Office of the Resident Coordinator are due to make their submissions.

The Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, says there are over 3000 inmates still at large following jailbreaks in Nigeria within the last year.
Aregbesola disclosed that 4,860 inmates escaped from various custodial centres from 2020 till date, and out of this, 984 have been recaptured.
He says biometrics of all inmates in the country have been captured, and it is the hope of the Federal Government that this exercise will aid the tracking and rearrest of the escapees.
He stressed that the recent attacks on some correctional facilities in the country are a reflection of the insecurity in Nigeria.
The minister assured Nigerians that a ministerial task force will soon be inaugurated to enforce the re-arrest of all escapees and their collaborators.

President Muhammadu Buhari says his administration had invested extensively in critical infrastructure and economic projects, stressing that the possibilities being created through the investments for Nigerians and foreigners are enormous.
Buhari also declared that investment in gas was a top priority of his government, as it had huge benefits in terms of financial returns and generation of power.
Buhari emphasised his administration’s commitment to an infrastructural renaissance for Nigeria because there can’t be sustainable development without it.

ECOWAS experts converged in Ghana to review and validate the draft Supplementary Act Setting the Conditions and Modalities for Community Levy Implementation and Management.
This Act once approved would replace the Protocol on Community Levy which had been in existence for 25 years now.
The Commissioner for Finance, Mrs Halima Ahmed expressed her appreciation for the full participation of experts from all ECOWAS Member States despite the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic.
She recalled that the Community Levy Protocol was established by a Decision of the ECOWAS Authority in 1996 and its full implementation began in 2003.

President Muhammadu Buhari says that Nigerians can look after themselves when infrastructure is in place. He says when infrastructure is in place, Nigerians can look after themselves.
Buhari also noted that his administration is working very hard on infrastructure because there can’t be sustainable development without it.
He says crude oil which Nigeria depends so much on has lost a lot of energy.

The Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, says smuggling is responsible for the rising cost of rice in the country.
The Minister says smuggling is affecting the market and hurting the citizens adding that there is a lot of distortion and the distortion is arising from the smuggling of goods into the country.
She also reiterated the Federal Government’s efforts in fighting to smuggle, noting that there is a combined team of the Nigerian Customs Service, Police, the Department of Security Services among others to rid the nation of economic saboteurs.

President Muhammadu Buhari urged world leaders and global health institutions to follow a regime of enabling access to the COVID-19 vaccines, admonishing that sidelining countries in terms of reach will undermine the entire effort for safety.
President Buhari says export restrictions that encourage needless hoarding of vaccines need to be lifted while welcoming the pledges by industrialized countries to share vaccines.
The President says the pledges should be fulfilled in a timely manner, appreciating some countries, like France, that have donated vaccines to developing countries.

The Pakistani government and the armed group Pakistan Taliban have agreed to a one-month ceasefire.
Government spokesman Fawad Chaudhry says the Taliban government in Afghanistan helped facilitate the ceasefire between the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan and the banned outfit.
Chaudhry says the government of Pakistan and banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan have agreed on a complete ceasefire.
State broadcaster Pakistan Television reports that the minister said the focus of the talks was on state sovereignty, national security, peace, social and economic stability in the areas concerned.

The United States Supreme Court has heard arguments in a case involving three Muslim men from California who accused the FBI of illegally conducting surveillance on them following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The country’s top court has been asked to decide whether to allow the men’s lawsuit to move forward amid opposition from the FBI, which has claimed it cannot be sued for religious discrimination because doing so could reveal state secrets.
Muslim Americans across the US have accused the FBI of systematically violating their constitutional rights by spying on them after 9/11, but there have been few opportunities to challenge the FBI’s conduct in court because it has been primarily conducted in secret.

A United States appeals court has ruled that the WhatsApp messaging service can move forward with a lawsuit against NSO Group, asserting that the immunity from civil litigation in US courts enjoyed by foreign governments does not extend to the private Israeli surveillance company.
WhatsApp is suing NSO Group over the alleged targeting of its servers in California with malware to gain unauthorised access to approximately 1,400 mobile devices in violation of US state and federal law.
A three-judge panel on the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s decision to allow WhatsApp’s lawsuit to proceed, stressing that NSO Group does not qualify for sovereign immunity even if its clients are foreign government agencies.