His lawyers say even if he’s found guilty of the witness tampering charges he’s still facing the punishment would be less than the decade he’s already spent behind behind bars.

Jean-Pierre Bemba’s return to the DRC poses problems for President Joseph Kabila who appears to be preparing to contest elections later this year.

Having the MLC leader in jail has suited Kabila because Bemba is more popular in Kinshasa.

Bemba was acquitted on appeal Friday by the International Criminal Court, who said he could not be held criminally liable for crimes committed by his troops in the Central African Republic in 2002-2003.

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A summit in Chad’s capital N’jamena ratified a 17-year-old agreement binding a market of 30-million consumers.

Equatorial Guinea and Gabon are two small, oil-rich states that have had reservations about allowing visa-free access to citizens of larger and more troubled Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The N’jamena summit brought them aboard the Central African Economic Monetary Community or CEMAC.

They’ve approved the regional development bank spending two-and-a-half million Euros as seed money for the implementation of the draft agreement signed in 2013

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The peatland in the Congo Basin holds  about 30 billion metric tons of Carbon which is roughly equivalent to two decades of fossil fuel emissions in the United States.

The peat, which consists of slowly decomposing vegetation in swamp forests, has been accumulating for more than 10 000 years.

It stretches from the Democratic Republic of Congo into the Central African Republic.

Author of a study published in the journal Nature. Simon Lewis. says it’s astonishing that in 2017 these kinds of discoveries can be made.

Lewis, a professor at the University of Leeds, worked  on a hunch that he’d find peat in the wetlands known as the Cuvette Centrale.

The vegetation, which is waterlogged year-round, lacks oxygen and other nutrients that would lead to its quick decomposition.

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He warned that the promises of the new state for peace, justice and opportunity have been squandered.

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The UN chief tells a Security Council debate on  peacebuilding in Africa he’s appalled by the scale of sexual violence documented by human rights teams.

He says the UN  demands accountability for all atrocities and that the leaders of South Sudan should commit to the peace process.

The secretary-general said that instability also persists in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya and Mali.,

Despite praise for the Peacebuilding Fund in the recent peace and security reviews, Ban says it faces a desperate funding shortfall.

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