Blurred Lines In Zimbabwe’s Arms of the State

A bill allowing President Robert Mugabe to appoint senior judges sparked outrage Wednesday from Zimbabwean opposition and activists who said it marked a new power-grab by the authoritarian government. The law, which was passed by the lower house on Tuesday, is the first amendment to the 2013 constitution, adopted four years ago by popular vote.
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Why An Average Congolese National Is Among The Poorest On the Planet

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) ranked 176 out of 187on the latest United Nations Human Development Index and two new investigations have shed more light on why that’s the case.

Despite being Africa’s biggest copper producer and the world’s leading source of cobalt with “up to $10 billion” worth of those minerals mined and sold abroad, an investigation by Global Witness, the anti-corruption charity, shows that “as little as 6%” of DR Congo’s annual mining exports reach the national budget.

As a result, despite the country’s vast mineral wealth, an average Congolese national is “among the poorest on the planet,” Global Witness says.

This reality, described as a “paradox of poverty”, is the consequence of large scale corruption which ensures very little of the country’s mineral wealth find its way back to the people. Between 2013 and 2015, mining revenue of up to $1.3 billion—twice the amount the country spends annually on health and education—failed to reach the treasury, according to Global Witness. The shortfall is blamed on a “dysfunctional state-owned mining company and opaque national tax agencies” as well as “corrupt networks linked to President Joseph Kabila’s regime.”

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Brilliant: 11-year-old Pre-teen From Benin Republic Passes exams 7 years early

 Latest news from around Africa: Peace Delaly Nicoue, the youngest person to sit the Baccalaureate exam in Benin this year, has passed with top grades. The shy 11-year-old told BBC Afrique he was “happy and relieved” to achieve 17 out of 20 in Maths because he plans to study economics at university.

Man executed for stabbing woman to death at her home - click for more

On Thursday a man convicted of murdering a woman by stabbing her repeatedly after breaking into her home about 13 years ago was executed.

TaiChin Preyor, 46, died by lethal injection at the state's death chamber in Huntsville, a prisons official said.

The execution was delayed for more than three hours to allow the U.S. Supreme Court time to hear an appeal from Preyor's lawyer to spare his life, which the court rejected.

The execution was the 543rd in Texas since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the most of any state.

“First and foremost I’d like to say, ’Justice has never advanced by taking a life’ by Coretta Scott King. Lastly, to my wife and to my kids, I love y’all forever and always. That’s it," Preyor was quoted as saying in his final statement by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Preyor was convicted in the 2004 killing of Jami Tackett, 24. He also stabbed a man who was with her, who survived.

"Several of Tackett’s neighbors heard her screaming and saw Preyor when he left her apartment," the Texas Attorney General's Office said.

Lawyers for Preyor launched the appeal at the court on Thursday, arguing that prior counsel was incompetent and included one lawyer who lost his license two decades earlier and another attorney with no death penalty experience who used Wikipedia to navigate the Texas death penalty system.

"His trial counsel ignored glaring references to significant mitigation evidence, depriving jurors of crucial information likely to persuade them to impose a life sentence," Preyor's lawyers said in their filing.

Lawyers for Texas asked the Supreme Court to deny the appeal, saying Preyor had been justly sentenced and should have raised concerns about prior counsel earlier.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Leslie Adler and Richard Pullin)