Gist Arena

PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan has approved a bill banning gay marriage and same-sex partnerships that sparked international condemnation, his spokesman said on Monday. "I can confirm that the president has signed the bill into law," Goodluck Jonathan's spokesman Reuben Abati told AFP, without specifying a date but adding that it happened earlier this month. Abati said Jonathan signed off on the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Bill 2013 because it was consistent with the attitudes of most people towards homosexuality in the west African nation. "More than 90 percent of Nigerians are opposed to same sex marriage. So, the law is in line with our cultural and religious beliefs as a people," he added. "And I think that this law is made for a people and what (the) government has done is consistent with the preference of its environment." Amnesty International urged Jonathan to reject the bill, calling it "discriminatory" and warning of...

Sectarian violence in the Central African Republic has reached a new extreme with an act of cannibalism in the capital, Bangui. The BBC's Paul Wood has heard a graphic first-person account, which some might find upsetting. The buses throwing up clouds of red clay dust had yet to rub out the ugly bloodstain in the dirt. A Muslim man had been murdered here a few days ago, by Christians. His limbs were hacked off. Then one of the crowd ate the flesh in a public demonstration of cannibalism. We were filming nearby when a young man in a yellow T-shirt came up to talk to me. "I am the naughty one," he said in broken French. Puzzled, I shook his hand and was about to ease past him when I noticed the machete tucked into his skinny jeans. "I am the naughty one," he repeated. With a sickening feeling, I realised I was talking to the cannibal. Camera phones had captured the crime. The pictures show a charred and dismembered body being dragged through the street by a crowd....