Month: February 2023

Luanda – 1º de Agosto beat Desportivo da Lunda Sul1-0 in the fourth round of the first division of the national first football championship (Girabola 2022/23), played at Estádio das Mangueiras, in Saurimo.

With this result 1º de Agosto climbed to second position of the competition, with 33 points, while Desportivo da Lunda Sul remained 11th in the championship led by Petro de Luanda (37 pts).

The match had been postponed due to 1º de Agosto’s participation in African competitions.

The other match, which was supposed to conclude the 14th round between Sporting de Benguela and Cuando Cubango FC did not take place, due to the fact that the Cuando Cubango FC quit the championship.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luanda – Angolan President João Lourenço on Wednesday appointed Luzia da Silva Bartolomeu José as deputy governor for Political, Social and Economic Sector of the northern Cuanza Norte Province, and Angelino Edmundo Elavoco for the same position in the central Huambo Province.

The President’s Press Office gave the information in a statement, adding that the President also put an end to the mandate of the members of the Board of Directors of the Angolan Communications Institute (Inacom).

New Board of Directors of Inacom

The Angolan Head of State appointed Joaquim Domingos Muhongo as CEO of Inacom.

In the same ambit, the President appointed Francisco Gomes Quininga, Ana Frederico Carlo de Matos, Ângelo Miguel Buta João and Paulo Jorge Paiva as executive directors of the same institute.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luanda – The minister of State and chief of the Civil Affairs Office of the Head of State, Adão de Almeida, said Wednesday in the Justice Palace, in Luanda, that the Constitution of the Republic (CRA), in force for the last 13 years, has been able to ensure the much desired political stability of the country.

He said that the evolution of the collective conscience and social mutations require the Constitution to be dynamic, capable of adapting itself permanently.

Adão de Almeida was representing the Head of State, João Lourenço, at the ceremony that served to launch activities to mark the 13th anniversary of the entry into force of the CRA, which is marked on 5 February.

He said that the CRA requires creative judicial and constitutional solutions that are inspired by the idea of legality and the need to build a free, fair, democratic and solidarity society that promotes peace, equality and social progress.

He reminded that the initiative of constitutional revision that took place in 2021, eleven years after the entry into force of the new Constitution of the Republic, broadened the catalogue of fundamental rights.

He went on to say that it enshrined the right to vote for Angolan citizens residing outside the country and clarified the mechanisms for political supervision of governmental activity by the Parliament.

The minister of State said that this action provided greater stability, security and predictability to the institutional relationship between the two sovereign bodies.

Adão de Almeida highlighted the fact that the constitutional revision had increased the autonomy of the National Reserve Bank of Angola.

“The revision gave greater dynamism to the 2010 Constitution, keeping it alive and increased its potential legitimacy”, he said.

According to the minister of State, for an active durability, the Constitution needs to be truly normative with high potential and establish affinity relationship with citizens.

In his speech, he also praised the Constitutional Court´s investment in the constitutional literacy of citizens, such as the elaboration of the “Children´s Constitution”, which included translating the Constitution into different vernacular (indigenous) languages.

He stated that the “week of the Constitution of the Republic of Angola – 2023”, which opened today, will be dedicated to the promotion and protection of children’s rights.

Constitutional Court (TC) promotes the Constitution

The President of the Constitutional Court (TC) Laurinda Cardoso, said that the institution intends to reinforce the promotion of the Constitution among children and other cultural sections.

Laurinda Cardoso underlined that the TC intends to continue to make the Constitution an important symbol of national unity, a channel of communication, of sincere and functional dialogue between the institutions, without undermining anyone.

Promoting Children’s Rights

Also at the Palace of Justice, a round table was held on the “Protection of children’s rights in the Constitution of the Republic”, with the 1st vice-president of the National Assembly, Américo Cunonoca, the UNICEF child protection representative, Giovanni D´Amato, and the judge of the Constitutional Court, Maria da Conceição Sango, as speakers.

The speakers praised the role of families in the protection and integral education of children.

Américo Cunonoca encouraged the government to strengthen child

protection policies, while Judge Maria Sango defended the creation of measures to reduce the number of homeless children.

UNICEF reaffirmed its commitment to cooperation within the framework of the national development plan.

Answering questions from adolescents, the minister of Social Action, Family and Promotion of Women, Ana Paula do Sacramento Neto, said that the government’s priority will continue to be the empowerment of families, due to the essential role they play in the education of children.

Ana Paula do Sacramento also spoke about the implementation of reproductive education programmes to reduce early pregnancy.

Within the scope of the activities planned to celebrate the 13th anniversary of the Constitution of the Republic (CRA), a cartoon version for children and translated into the vernacular languages Cuanhama, Nganguela, Fiote and Cokwe was launched today.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luanda – Mozambique Parliament Speaker, Esperança Laurinda Francisco Nhiuane Bias, starts Thursday an official six-day visit to Angola, ANGOP has learnt.

The working programme includes a visit to the coastal Benguela Province and a meeting with her Angolan counterpart, Carolina Cerqueira.

In Benguela, the delegation is scheduled to visit the Local Office of Support to the Provincial Electoral Constituency, meet with the provincial governor, Luís Nunes, and visit infra-structures and socio-economic projects.

The agenda also includes the signing of a new cooperation protocol between the National Assembly (Angolan parliament) and the Assembly of the Republic of Mozambique, signed for the first time on November 27, 2003, as well as meetings with the chairpersons of the specialised working parliamentary committees to exchange experiences, as well as meet with the leaders of the political parties represented in the National Assembly.

A meeting is also planned with the Association of Women in Legal Careers, guided visits to historical and cultural sites in the Angolan capital.

Esperança Bias also has a meeting planned with the Mozambican community in Angola.

The Mozambican delegation is composed of 14 members, with highlight to the parliamentary whips of FRELIMO, Sérgio Parmtie, RENAMO’s Viana Magalhães, and the MDM, Lutero Simamgo.

This is the first official visit of the Mozambique parliament speaker to Angola after being appointed on January 13, 2020.

Esperança Bias has been an MP since 2015, having been deputy chairwoman and afterwards chairwoman of the Planning and Budget Committee.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Geneva – The Permanent Mission of Angola to the UN in Geneva participated on Wednesday in the 8th Geneva Engage Awards ceremony held at the headquarters of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The annual “Geneva Engage Awards” recognizes Geneva’s international players in their media outreach and online engagement.

The event traditionally looks at the media engagement of Geneva-based organizations and the relevance of the Internet in Geneva.

This year, ten international organizations were recognized for their links with each other and other international players in Geneva, as well as their mentions and interactions with the media.

According to a note of the Angolan Permanent Representation to the UN, in Geneva sent to ANGOP, the award contemplated three categories, namely International Organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations, Associations and the Permanent Representations at the UN, in Geneva.

A new award was also introduced that has to do with internet accessibility to recognize the efforts for the improvement of the performance in terms of website accessibility.

The winners

The distinctions for the winners of the “8th Geneva Engage Award” in the International Organizations category were awarded to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

In the Non-Governmental Organizations category, the podium was taken by the World Council of Churches, the NGO New Humanitarian and the World Organization of the Scout Movement.

In the Permanent Representations category the winners were the Permanent Mission of the United States of America to the United Nations Office at Geneva, the Permanent Delegation of the European Union to the United Nations Office at Geneva and the Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations Office at Geneva.

In terms of Effective and Innovative Online Meetings the winner was the World Meteorological Organization and for the accessibility prize an image of the International AIDS Society logo was the winner.

The methodology used by the promoters was based on the analysis of the media reach for the 8th edition of the Prize which ran from January 1 to 31 December 2022.

The evaluation of the participants was measured according to the groups of indicators of dissemination and accessibility of twitter accounts, number of followers, number of posts, growth of followers compared to the previous year, growth related to posts published on twitter compared to the previous year, the new twitter engagement index based on the average number of likes and tweets, the new connections between Geneva-based actors taking into account retweets and mentions on Facebook.

The Geneva Engage initiative was launched by the Geneva Internet Platform (GIP) in 2016 with the support of the Republic and Canton of Geneva, and DiploFoundation, and has contributed to assessing the interaction between Geneva International and stakeholders around the world who are impacted by the policies discussed and negotiated in Geneva.

The annual Geneva Engage Awards aim to recognize the efforts of Geneva International stakeholders in the dissemination and engagement of social media, contributing to improved efficiency and effectiveness in the use of information and communication technologies.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

The Federal Reserve raised its target interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday, yet promised “ongoing increases” in borrowing costs as part of its still unresolved battle against inflation.

“Inflation has eased somewhat but remains elevated,” the U.S. central bank said in a statement that acknowledged the progress made in lowering the pace of price increases from the 40-year highs hit last year.

Russia’s war in Ukraine, for example, was still seen as adding to “elevated global uncertainty,” the Fed said. But policymakers dropped the language of earlier statements citing the war as well as the COVID-19 pandemic as direct contributors to rising prices.

Still, the Fed said the U.S. economy was enjoying “modest growth” and “robust” job gains, with policymakers still “highly attentive to inflation risks.”

“The [Federal Open Market] Committee anticipates that ongoing increases in the target range will be appropriate in order to attain a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2% over time,” the Fed said.

The decision lifted the benchmark overnight interest rate to a range between 4.50% and 4.75%, a move widely anticipated by investors and flagged by U.S. central bankers ahead of this week’s two-day policy session.

But in keeping the promise of more rate hikes to come, the Fed pushed back against investor expectations that it was ready to flag the end of the current tightening cycle as a nod to the fact that inflation has been steadily declining for six months.

The statement did indicate that any future rate increases would be in quarter-percentage-point increments, dropping a reference to the “pace” of future increases and instead referring to the “extent” of rate changes.

But those, it said, would take into account how the policy moves so far had impacted the economy, language that linked further rate increases to the evolution of upcoming economic data.

The Fed hopes it can continue nudging inflation lower to its 2% target without triggering a deep recession or causing a substantial rise in the unemployment rate from the current 3.5%, a level rarely seen in recent decades. Inflation, based on the Fed’s preferred measure, slowed to a 5% annual rate in December.

The U.S. central bank did not issue new economic projections from its policymakers on Wednesday.

Source: Voice Of America

For thousands of years, ancient Egyptians mummified their dead in the search for eternal life. Now, researchers have used chemistry and an unusual collection of jars to figure out how they did it.

Their study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is based on a rare archaeological find: An embalming workshop with a trove of pottery around 2,500 years old. Many jars from the site were still inscribed with instructions like “to wash” or “to put on his head.”

By matching the writing on the outside of the vessels with the chemical traces inside, researchers uncovered new details about the “recipes” that helped preserve bodies for thousands of years.

“It’s like a time machine, really,” said Joann Fletcher, an archaeologist at University of York who was not involved with the study. “It’s allowed us to not quite see over the shoulders of the ancient embalmers, but probably as close as we’ll ever get.”

Those recipes showed that embalmers had deep knowledge about what substances would help preserve their dead, said Fletcher, whose partner was a co-author on the study. And they included materials from far-flung parts of the world — meaning Egyptians went to great lengths to make their mummies “as perfect as they could possibly be.”

The workshop — uncovered in 2016 by study author Ramadan Hussein, who passed away last year — is located in the famous burial grounds of Saqqara. Parts of it sit above the surface, but a shaft stretches down to an embalming room and burial chamber underground, where the jars were discovered.

It was in rooms like these where the last phase of the process took place, said Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at The American University in Cairo who was not involved with the study. After drying out the body with salts, which probably took place above ground, embalmers would then take the bodies below.

“This was the last phase of your transformation where the secret rites, the religious rites, were being performed,” Ikram said. “People would be chanting spells and hymns while you were being wrapped and resin was being anointed all over your body.”

Experts already had some clues about what substances were used in those final steps, mainly from testing individual mummies and looking at written texts. But a lot of gaps remained, said senior author Philipp Stockhammer, an archaeologist at Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany.

The new finds helped crack the case.

Take the word “antiu,” which shows up in a lot of Egyptian texts but didn’t have a direct translation, Stockhammer said. In the new study, scientists found that several jars labeled as “antiu” contained a mixture of different substances — including animal fat, cedar oil and juniper resin.

These substances, along with others found in the jars, have key properties that would help preserve the mummies, said lead author Maxime Rageot, an archaeologist at Germany’s University of Tubingen.

Plant oils — which were used to protect the liver and treat the bandages — could ward off bacteria and fungi, while also improving the smell. Hard materials like beeswax, used on the stomach and skin, could help keep out water and seal the pores.

Some of the substances came from very far away — like dammar and elemi, types of resin that come from the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia. These results show that ancient Egyptians would trade far and wide to get the most effective materials, the authors said.

“It’s interesting to see the complexity,” Stockhammer said. “Having this global network on the one hand, having all this chemical knowledge on the other side.”

Ikram said an important next step for the research will be to test different parts of actual mummies to see if the same substances show up. And these recipes probably weren’t universal — they changed over time and varied between workshops.

Still, the study gives a basis for understanding the past, and can bring us closer to people who lived long ago, she said.

“The ancient Egyptians have been separated from us through time and space, yet we still have this connection,” Ikram said. “Human beings all throughout history have been scared of death.”

Source: Voice Of America