Suspected political thugs have snatched ballot boxes and voting materials at Oredo Ward 4 unit 42 on Butcher Street in Edo state.
It was gathered that the hoodlums also chased away the polling officials who took cover in a house on Lagos Street.
According to one of the security agents attached to the unit, the attackers came with a gun to cart away voting materials as the officials were settling down for the day’s job.
The security stated that it was shocking that the police came and arrested two people in the house where they hid from the hoodlums.
He said, “I am one of the security officials who were at the unit. As the officials were getting ready to commence voting, the boys who were armed stormed the polling unit and made away with voting materials.
“The officials took to their heels and took cover at the popular Osula house on Lagos Street. Surprisingly, the police came and took away Kelvin Adu and Idogbowa Osula who were protecting us and the polling officials from being attacked,” he added.
Governor Godwin Obaseki, who spoke on the issue, stated that the issue would be looked into.
Obaseki said, “We need to reconfirm that story. It doesn’t make sense to snatch a ballot box that doesn’t have ballot papers in it. We will check that and verify. But I am confident because we made adequate preparations to ensure that every polling unit has at least five security personnel.
“It is too early to make any conclusive statement, two hours into voting. We are going to go round and see what is going on across the state,” he added
Meanwhile, there was heavy security presence at Third junction and the Upper Sakponba axis of Benin City with security operatives maintaining peace and order during the election.
The operatives made up of soldiers and police patrolled the area to deter troublemakers. The axis is known for its notoriety.
One of the security officials said they were not there to intimidate the residents but to maintain peace and deter those who were planning to foment trouble.
“Our duty here is to maintain law and order and not to intimidate anyone. It is also to make sure that the resident conducts themselves well,” he added.
One of the resident said that they woke up to the heavy presence of security wondering whether a war had broken out in the area.
“Are we at war? Why is there so much security presence here? They are treating people in this axis like criminals,” the resident said.
The other two male victims were also taken to hospital later, with non-life treating injuries. One suffered an injury to his foot and the second to his chest.
West Midlands Police have launched an investigation into the horror incident, and a cordon is still in place today.
An 18-year-old man arrested nearby last night on suspicion of possessing a knife, remains in police custody.
Detective inspector Matt Underwood said: ‘We understand incidents of this nature are shocking and we are thoroughly investigating all lines of enquiry.
‘We have already spoken with a number of people who were at the scene but we would also urge anyone who can help further with our enquiries to get in touch.’
Investigators have been speaking with witnesses and are reviewing CCTV footage from the area.
Officers from local teams are also carrying out extra patrols to support the community.
Nollywood actress, Kate Henshaw has lamented an alleged failure of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System,( BVAS) at her polling unit on Saturday.
The entertainment superstar made this known in a video posted on her Twitter page, alleging that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, was toying with her destiny.
Henshaw claimed her name was found on the INEC website aforetime but bemoaned the inability of the BVAS to make her accreditation happen, thus alleging disenfranchisement.
While she failed to mention the name of her polling unit, the diva called on the country’s electoral body to hastily address the challenge.
INEC is playing with my destiny, Kate Henshaw laments
INEC is playing with my destiny, Kate Henshaw laments
Nollywood actress, Kate Henshaw, has called out the Independent National Electoral Commission for the alleged failure of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System to accredit her as a registered voter…1 pic.twitter.com/kqJSzBSwz4
Nollywood actress, Kate Henshaw, has called out the Independent National Electoral Commission for the alleged failure of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System to accredit her as a registered voter…1 pic.twitter.com/kqJSzBSwz4
“INEC! I registered. I transferred my card and picked up my PVC. Now, your BVAS is saying I’m not registered but I’ve seen my name on the register on the wall and on your website,” Henshaw tweeted. “What are you guys trying to say? You people are looking for trouble with me. INEC! CNN! BBC! Anybody watching this election from outside of the country should know that INEC is playing games. “Not just me, but there are many people here whose names are not found on the BVAS. The person in charge of INEC Lagos should come and sort it out in the polling unit here. “You people are playing with my destiny. Yes!” She added.
According to the earthquake monitoring centre, the quake struck the Anatolian Turkish province of Nigde barely over two weeks after deadly earthquakes in the area claimed the lives of more than 50,000 people in Turkey and Syria.
According to EMSC, the earthquake was at a depth of 10 km (6.21 miles).
Saturday’s earthquake had a depth of 10 km (6.21 miles), the EMSC said, and hit the Bor district in the Niğde province- just 200 miles away from the initial 7.8 quake on February 6.
The quake has continued to devastate the region (Picture: Getty)
The disaster comes at a time when both Turkey and Syria had started work to reconstruct homes for the millions of people displaced by the quakes.
‘There is no negative situation at the moment. May God protect our country and our nation from all kinds of disasters,’ he said on Twitter.
On Monday, the region was once again struck by a 6.4 magnitude earthquake which hit parts of Turkey and Syria already laid to waste by the massive tremors which occurred two weeks prior.
Officials confirmed that three people died in Monday’s tremor after more buildings collapsed, trapping occupants, and several people were injured in both countries.
Nearly 240,000 rescue workers, including volunteers, continue to work in the 11 quake-hit provinces in Turkey.
Some of the areas affected by the quakes were reported to be difficult to access at first, but recovery efforts continue and casualty numbers are rising alongside them.
Isa Soares interviews Nobel Peace Prize winner and Former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos about his fear that Russia’s war on Ukraine is distracting the world from the climate crisis, the Israel-Palestinian conflict and many other global crises.
According to Kyiv, some Russian forces are leaving their positions in the Zaporizhzhia region of southern Ukraine.
According to the Ukrainian military’s general staff, Russian units have left the towns of Mykhailivka, Polohy, and Inzhenerne, all of which are located south of the city of Zaporizhzhia.
The Kremlin is also getting ready to evacuate “the staff of the occupying authorities” in the area, the military continued.
Since the beginning of the invasion, Russian military have been occupying parts of Zaporizhzhia; in September, Moscow unlawfully annexed Zaporizhzhia together with three other Ukrainian districts.
Front lines in the region run for more than 100 miles across rolling farmland. Geolocated footage posted on Wednesday shows the aftermath of strikes on buildings in Polohy.
On the battlefield, the Ukrainians appear to be repeating actions they undertook further south in Kherson, namely striking bridges, supply hubs and Russian troop concentrations behind the front lines.
Ukrainian forces pushed into Kherson over recent months and liberated large swathes of the region, including Kherson city, after Russian troops withdrew east of the Dnipro River last month.
The General Staff said that in recent days their strikes on about half a dozen places had wounded more than 230 Russian soldiers and destroyed ammunition and equipment.
CNN is unable to confirm the claims made by the General Staff.
Powerful explosions have rocked the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in recent weeks, renewing concerns that fighting so close to the facility could cause a nuclear accident.
On November 20, UN nuclear experts at the plant said that more than a dozen blasts were heard within a short period of time. Shelling was observed both near and at the site of the facility.
The Director General of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, hopes to reach an agreement with Russia and Ukraine on protecting the plant by year’s end.
In an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica published Friday, Grossi said: “My commitment is to reach a solution as soon as possible. I hope by the end of the year. I know that President Putin is following the process and I do not rule out another meeting with him soon, as well as with Ukrainian President Zelensky.”
The developments come as the Russian military has started a census in some parts of occupied territory in the Zaporizhzhia region, according to the Ukrainian mayor-in-exile of the southern Ukrainian city of Melitopol.
“Over the past few days, the Russians have been in a fuss. First, they were taking the wounded out of the hospital. Then they started a census in the towns of Mykhailivka and Burchak to allegedly prepare for evacuation,” Ivan Fedorov said on national television Friday. The Ukrainian military also said that the occupation authorities are conducting a census in Burchak.
Melitopol has been occupied by Russian forces since the early days of the invasion. Analysts have suggested that the next offensive front for the Ukrainians is likely to be a thrust southward toward it.
The General Staff said that elsewhere Russian forces continued to defend their positions in Luhansk region using tanks, mortars and artillery to prevent further advances of Ukrainian forces.
Russian units were also shelling several settlements in recently liberated parts of Kherson region. But Ukrainian Brigadier General Oleksii Hromov claimed that last week that Russian forces had accidentally fired on their own unit near the village of Tsukury in Kherson, killing 14 servicemen. CNN cannot verify that claim.
Hromov said that Russian forces had gathered in the city of Dzankhoi in Crimea, which had “actually turned into the largest military base on the territory … from where the Russian occupation troops and weapons and military equipment of the Russian Armed Forces are redeployed.”
A new study is urging assemblies to review their waste management policies, which should include senior high schools, in order to properly address waste management in the country.
It stated that solid waste management issues are not only important in communities, but also extend beyond the normal resident’s environment to schools, and thus cannot be ignored because students purchase a variety of materials that generate different types of waste.
According to the research, senior high schools, regardless of location, are experiencing population explosions as a result of the Free SHS policy. This increase in population has resulted in an increase in waste generation on various SHS campuses, which has the potential to be a source of many infectious diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, and, in some cases, malaria.
Dr. Simon Boateng, the study’s lead researcher, stated that the study, titled Solid Waste Management Practices and Challenges in Rural and Urban Senior High Schools in Ashanti Region, published in the Journal of Environmental and Public Health was to examine how SHSs are prepared to face this problem regarding solid waste management practices.
He said water bottles, polythene bags, and other materials that generate solid waste can be found all over the school grounds. It should be noted that as a result of this, there has been a rapid increase in inorganic (plastic waste) waste on school campuses.
The study discovered that there are solid waste management practices (i.e. waste collection, handling, storage, etc.) in Senior High Schools, but they are not without problems.
According to the study, urban senior high schools had irregular solid waste collection by some waste management companies, but rural schools did not. Rural schools continue to dump waste in open dumping areas.
The summary is that solid waste management is a problem in Senior High Schools as a consequence of the population increase on campuses. So the recommendation is that the District Assemblies should not only concentrate on the communities, but also consciously extend their regular services to the various SHS campuses.
In both urban and rural senior high schools, the issue of insufficient resources for effective waste management was a persistent challenge. While poor student attitudes toward waste management were a major constraint for rural schools, urban schools faced a challenge in the form of a poor waste collection routine.
In Ghana, urban domestic waste collection services are frequently provided for a fee by local government authorities or private companies, whereas rural residents dump their solid waste for free on open dumping sites.
The study recommended that school officials form environmental education clubs in order to promote effective waste management practices among students, particularly those from rural areas. The group would assist in educating other students about effective waste management practices.
This peer sensitisation is key, as students tend to heed their friends when they are on campus. Waste management policies by the district assemblies should not be exclusive to only the communities as senior high schools have been experiencing population explosion with the introduction of the free senior high school,” Dr. Boateng said.
He indicated that, school officials must promote solid waste segregation among students on campus. “Putrescible food/garden wastes can thus be converted into organic manure for school gardens. Nonputrescible wastes, on the other hand, such as plastic, can be recycled for other purposes.”
As criticism of its management of the stalled campaign grows,Russia’s Defense Ministryannounced yet another reorganisation of the commanders overseeing the war in Ukraine on Wednesday.
According to the ministry, Sergey Surovikin, the campaign’s current commander, would become one of General Valery Gerasimov’s three deputies as the campaign’s overall commander.
As the general commander of what the Kremlin euphemistically refers to as the “Special Military Operation,” Surovikin was just appointed in October.
In terms of the bureaucratic hierarchy, the announcement is hardly an upheaval. Surovikin already reported to Gerasimov.
“Surovikin is not punished and Gerasimov is not punished. It’s all one team. Well, of course with competition, which always happens among the top dogs.”
But the decision puts Gerasimov, who has been chief of the General Staff for more than a decade, closer to direct supervision of the campaign – and to responsibility for it. While Gerasimov was a key figure in planning the invasion, he appears to have been at arm’s length since, with just one reported visit to the command of the campaign inside Ukraine, though the Defense Ministry did not confirm that either.
Mark Galeotti, senior associate fellow with the Royal United Services Institute, said “it is a kind of demotion [for Gerasimov] or at least the most poisoned of chalices. It’s now on him, and I suspect Putin has unrealistic expectations again.”
Gerasimov has sometimes gone weeks without public appearances and was not seen at the Victory Day parade in Moscow last year, which at the time led to speculation about his position.
He now combines direct command of the Ukraine campaign with that of chief interlocutor with the United States on issues such as military “de-confliction.”
He last spoke with the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, in November after a Ukrainian air defense missile landed in Poland.
Just why the Russian Defense Ministry has made this move at this moment is unclear. It said there was a “need to organize closer interaction between the branches and arms of the Armed Forces” and improve the support and effectiveness of “command and control of groupings of troops.”
Gerasimov will have three deputies – Surovikin, the army commander Oleg Salyukov and the Deputy Chief of the General Staff Colonel-General Aleksey Kim.
The new structure implies that Gerasimov’s seniority will improve coordination in a campaign where different branches of the armed forces have frequently seemed less than synchronized.
Some analysts believe the move may also be an attempt by the ministry to exert tighter control over the campaign ahead of a critical few months in which the remainder of the reserve force mobilized in the autumn of 2022 will be deployed after training.
The Ukrainian military has said it expects a fresh Russian offensive in the early spring. The overall military commander in Ukraine, General Valery Zaluzhny, told The Economist in December: “They [Russian forces] are 100% being prepared.”
A major Russian attack could come “in February, at best in March and at worst at the end of January,” he said.
Rob Lee at King’s College London tweeted that Wednesday’s announcement “reasserts the MoD’s position overseeing the war… this may also partially be a response to Wagner’s increasingly influential and public role in the war.”
Wagner’s boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has been both vocal and visible on the front lines, as his contract fighters have been prominently involved in the assault on Soledar in the eastern Donetsk region. He has repeatedly said that Wagner mercenaries fighters are exclusively responsible for advances in the Soledar area.
Video shows shooting battle between Ukrainian and Russian forces
There’s been a long history of tension between Prigozhin and Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu. But Prigozhin has praised General Surovikin for managing an orderly withdrawal of Russian forces in the southern Kherson region, as their position became less and less tenable.
In November, Prigozhin said on his Telegram channel: “Generals have to win victory after victory every day. To whom can Surovikin be compared? Surovikin is honest and principled, he is trusted by the army.”
Some commentators wonder whether the ministry is “circling the wagons” as criticism persists of its handling of the campaign. Wednesday’s announcement follows news that the man who lost his job as commander of the Central Military District in October, Colonel-General Aleksandr Lapin, had been appointed Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces, according to state news agency TASS.
Both Prigozhin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov singled out Lapin for criticism. “It’s not just that Lapin is worthless. It’s the fact that he is covered at the top by the leaders in the General Staff,” Kadyrov wrote on his Telegram channel in October last year.
It is inconceivable that Gerasimov’s appointment would have occurred without President Vladimir Putin’s approval and more likely his order. If Gerasimov turns the tide of the war, it will look like a brilliant move. If he fails, then he will take the blame.
A Russian military analyst who blogs under the pseudonym ‘Rybar,’ and has more than a million followers on Telegram, does not expect the shake-up to be successful – suggesting it’s hoping for “a miracle in the 11th month of the special operation.”
“The sum does not change by moving around its parts,” Rybar wrote.
Dara Massicot, a senior researcher at the Rand Corporation, says the Ministry of Defense is “demoting their most competent senior commander and replacing him with an incompetent one. This is a story that has it all: infighting, power struggles, jealousy “
She says that while Surovikin committed no strategic blunders, Shoigu and Gerasimov are to blame for the poor planning of the campaign. “They flunked it. They signed off on a secret plan, multiple bad assumptions, didn’t tell the majority of their troops. [It] led to big casualties and a partially broken force,” Massicot tweeted.
Galeotti says Gerasimov is “hanging by a thread”, tweeting: “I don’t think this is intended to create a pretext to sack him as the war is too important and Putin can sack who he wants. But he needs some kind of win or a career ends in ignominy.”
Gerasimov is 67 years old and was appointed by Putin in 2012. He gained a profile among western analysts after a speech that was reported in the Russian newspaper Military-Industrial Courier.
Gerasimov said the use of propaganda and subversion meant that “a perfectly thriving state can, in a matter of months and even days, be transformed into an arena of fierce armed conflict, become a victim of foreign intervention, and sink into a web of chaos, humanitarian catastrophe, and civil war.”
The arrival of Russia’s “little green men” on the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in the spring of 2014 was seen as a successful example of this approach, sometimes dubbed “hybrid warfare.”
Galeotti says that “what Gerasimov was talking about was the use of subversion to prepare the battlefield before intervention, precisely the kind of operations used in Ukraine [in 2014]. Breaking the chain of command, stirring up local insurrections, jamming communications — these are all classic moves that hardly began in Crimea.”
Reports of physical attacks on voters at various polling stations in the ongoing Nigerian elections are emerging.
Thugs have reportedly disrupted the voting process at Ikota Primary School, Oshodi, Lagos. Although it is unclear what may have triggered the violence, The Independent Ghana has intercepted photos of a man who was allegedly attacked and has sustained cuts on his arms and head following the incident.
There have also been reports of vandalised ballot boxes.
Some hoodlums are roaming the streets of Nigeria, destroying ballot boxes at various polling stations in the country.
According to one Joey Akan, a journalist, these thugs visited Oba Elegushi and turned the place upside down.
In his attempt to save the situation, he received a number of slaps before being rescued.
“Thugs have destroyed ballot boxes and threw away the ballot papers at Oba Elegushi. I collected a couple of slaps for fighting back before I got pulled from the melee, into a house for my safety. Now I have to be smuggled out of the voting area because I have been marked,” he tweeted.
The Ukrainians’ capacity to deploy freshly delivered Western systems to attack Russian command centres, logistical hubs, and ammunition dumps far beyond the front lines is a new and potentially extremely important component in the ongoing combat in Ukraine.
The Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions have all had large explosions in the last week. The targeting has been very successful, according to the data, which includes satellite imagery and analyses by Western analysts.
The Ukrainian military has been pleading with Western allies for long-range, precise artillery and rocket systems for months. Now that they have them, they are using them effectively throughout the east and south of the nation.
The Ukrainian military is not giving away many specifics but Vadim Denysenko, a senior official at the Interior Ministry, said Wednesday that in the past two weeks, “above all things thanks to the weapons that Ukraine received, we were able to destroy approximately two dozen warehouses with weapons and stocks of fuel and lubricants. This will certainly affect the intensity of fire” the Russians can muster, he said.
Best-in-class is the US-supplied HIMARS multiple launch rocket system, but the Ukrainians have also received M777 howitzers from both the US and Canada, and Caesar long-range howitzers from France.
In addition, the UK has committed to providing M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), which are more powerful than HIMARS, but it’s unclear when Ukraine will complete training on the system and deploy it.
The HIMARS’ versatility is in its name: the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System. Its mobility makes it harder to target and it can be crewed by just eight soldiers. The rockets supplied to Ukraine have a range of 70 to 80 kilometers (about 50 miles). And their GPS guidance systems make them extremely accurate.
As Mick Ryan, a military analyst and former Australian major-general, puts it: “It is used to destroy critical communications nodes, command posts, airfields, and important logistics facilities.”
Senior Russian officers are therefore especially vulnerable. HIMARS’ accuracy also means the Ukrainians can worry less about civilian casualties. The guided rockets are accurate to within two to three meters, two defense officials told CNN, allowing the Ukrainians to use far fewer rounds to hit targets precisely at distance.
The HIMARS appears to have been used in a massive strike against a warehouse in the town of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region on Monday night. The strike set off secondary explosions and caused widespread damage, according to satellite imagery reviewed by CNN. The imagery showed how precise the attack had been, leaving just one small crater.
Local pro-Russian officials said parts of one HIMARS rockets were recovered; the serial numbers matched the weapon.
There were also large explosions in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, setting off multiple detonations. The same happened at Shakhtarsk in Donetsk and in the Kherson region at the weekend, as well as near Melitopol in Zaporizhzhia last week.
Altogether, it appears that about a dozen targets deep behind Russian lines have been hit in July, most of them at least 40 kilometers behind the front – a distance at which accuracy with old Tochka-U missiles would be difficult.
The Ukrainians have also been firing HIMARS at night, making it more difficult for the Russians to spot and strike the launchers. Russian forces have struggled to fight at night since the beginning of the conflict, and the Ukrainians are still using this to their advantage.
Targeting may also have been made easier by the way the Russian military stores and moves its weapons.
Phillips O’Brien, professor strategic studies at St Andrews University, says the Nova Kakhovka strike is revealing “about the state of the logistics war and the real problems the Russians face.”
The target was adjacent to a rail hub, vital to the Russian logistics effort to sustain their offensive, and so was an obvious target.
“The Russians left a ludicrously easy to locate, major supply depot exactly where someone would expect to find it. Either the Russians are unable to react because of command failure or they can’t actually move the depots because they lack the road movement,” O’Brien tweeted.
One Ukrainian official hinted that targeting the warehouse had been easy. Serhiy Khlan, a member of Kherson regional council, said on Facebook: “In Nova Kakhovka minus one Russian ammo depot. They brought, brought, stockpiled, stockpiled and now have fireworks at night.”
Ben Hodges, the former commander of the US Army in Europe, tweeted after the Kherson attack at the weekend: “Least favorite job in the Russian Army? Ammunition handler.”
In a briefing last week, a senior US Defense Department official said that “the focus on higher capability, precision, further-range weapons” for Ukraine was front and center.
On Friday, the Pentagon announced a shipment to Ukraine of 1,000 rounds of 155mm artillery shells – but a newer munition with greater accuracy, according to the official. The Ukrainians have been expending 155mm munitions at a rate of 3,000 a day. Like HIMARS, the more accurate rounds should mean fewer are needed.
The official contended that HIMARS was changing the battlefield. “What we’ve seen is the ability of the Ukrainians to use these HIMAR systems to significantly disrupt the ability of the Russians to move forward.”
“If the Russians think they can outlast the Ukrainians, they need to rethink that,” the official added.
A Russian military reporter, Yuri Kotenok, said this week that the HIMARS represents “a serious threat. The liberated areas of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, the DPR and the LPR, as well as the territory of Russia, fall under the possible fire of HIMARS.”
Kotenok, who has nearly 300,000 followers on Telegram, said Russian air defenses need to be improved – as does the targeting of HIMARS, whether in transit or deployed. He said that “If this continues, it is necessary to hit the decision-making centers. Our limitations in retaliatory strikes against the enemy are to some extent incomprehensible to me.”
Another Russian reporter, Roman Sapenkov, said he witnessed the strike at the weekend on the Russian base at Kherson’s airport.
“I was struck by the fact that the whole packet, five or six rockets, landed practically on a penny. Usually MLRS lands in a wide area, and at maximum range they scatter like a fan,” he wrote, referring to multiple launch rocket systems that are less advanced than HIMARS or the M777.
“It is clear this is just the beginning … They will cover all the command posts and military facilities; the data for this has been collected for the last 4 months.”
One problem for the Russians may be the way they transport munitions, which is where the humble pallet comes into play.
Few Russian military trucks include a crane to lift heavy munitions, which are rarely carried on pallets but loaded and unloaded by hand. Plenty of ageing Soviet ZIL trucks have been seen in Ukraine.
Moving weapons and ammunition this way is cumbersome, time-consuming and potentially gives enemy surveillance a greater opportunity to detect such shipments. By contrast, the UK and US militaries palletize much of their ammunition or carry it in containers.
The Russian way of war – as witnessed over the last three months in eastern Ukraine – relies on huge artillery barrages to pulverize targets before moving forward. Russian military doctrine has always emphasized a massive use of artillery, MLRS and mortars. That demands constant resupply: Some analysts calculate that Russia is using at least 7,000 shells and rockets a day in Donbas, and often many more.
Serhiy Hayday, head of the Luhansk regional military administration, said Wednesday: “The Russian army does not stop shelling. However, most likely, it saves the existing stocks of shells, because their supply has been interrupted by the work of our new long-range weapons.”
Ukrainian officials claim that the Russians are being thrown off-balance by their growing capability for long-range precision attacks.
In and around Melitopol, for example, the Russians have imposed restrictions on civilian movements in recent days. The area has seen at least two major strikes this month against Russian bases.
But for the Ukrainians to sustain this rate of strikes requires an unimpeded conduit of munitions from the West. The Ukrainian military is transitioning from an organization largely reliant on Soviet-era artillery and rocket systems – with inadequate ammunition – to using precision Western weapons with enough ammunition in a matter of months.
Also unknown is whether any of the handful of HIMARS so far shipped have been taken out by Russian fire. The Ukrainian military and defense ministries avoid providing details about their deployment.
Ryan cautions that while the HIMARS “has provided the Ukrainian Armed Forces with a new ‘Long Hand’ to attack the Russian invaders, there is no such thing as a silver bullet solution in war.”
But US officials are confident that the accuracy of the weapon – as well as other accurate long-range systems – will progressively change the battlefield.
Germany has asked the Ghanaian government to cut down on its budget.
Ghana has in the last two weeks been appealing to Germany to not only grant the country debt relief, but intercede on its behalf to get China to do same.
Ghana owes China $1.7 billion.
On Friday, in a rare move, the German Ambassador to Ghana, Daniel Krull, went public with his concerns about the huge size of Ghana’s government.
Speaking at a press conference, Mr. Krull questioned why Ghana continues to have a size of government that is far bigger than Germany’s.
“I only can compare and with other countries like my own and I can just come to the conclusion that the number is much higher than in my country.
“So that might bring me to the conclusion that maybe there’s room for improvement,” he said.
He added that “Ghana has a very dense layer of institutions and responsibilities all over the country.”
According to him, Ghana cannot go out to the international community crying for help and still refuse to cut its expenditure.
“Well, of course, it depends very much on what kind of expenditures you’re looking at … I’m convinced this is true for if I look at the budget of the German Foreign Ministry of the German government, I’m convinced there are important tasks that can be cut without hurting the economic development.
“And I’m convinced without going into details this also is true for Ghana. There are certain expenditures that can be lowered substantially and make an important impact and it has to be part of the package.
“I mean, I cannot go out to the international community and say I need help, but I’m not willing to cut my own budget expenditures. I have to be careful not to cut the social expenditures that are destroying lives and families. I have to be very careful not to take measures that might negatively impact economic growth.
“But I’m convinced there are many expenditures that could be looked at very carefully and can be lowered substantially,” he said.
In a related development, German Ambassador to Ghana says Ghana’s talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout is in danger.
This, Daniel Krull attributes to China’s unwillingness to engage in possible debt relief.
“The biggest elephant in the room is China. China is the largest creditor to Ghana and so far, it’s not fully supporting the setting up of the creditor’s committee where all the creditors will sit down and agree on a package for Ghana,” he said in a yet-to-be-aired interview on Foreign Affairs on the Joy News Channel.
“Time is of the essence, time is running out. Without this agreement with the bilateral creditors, the IMF package is in severe danger,” he added.
The consistency with which our faucets consistently deliver water each time we turn them on can give the impression that water is a mystical, limitless resource.
Nevertheless, misusing this limited resource can lead to water shortages and impair our ability to cope with the effects of the climate catastrophe.
According to Rick Hogeboom, executive director of the Water Footprint Network, a global knowledge hub based in the Netherlands, “Four billion people today already live in places that are affected by water scarcity at least part of the year.” The demand-supply balance will be worsened by climate change, he predicted.
“If all people were to conserve water in some way, that would help ease some of the immediate impacts seen from the climate crisis,” said Shanika Whitehurst, associate director of sustainability for Consumer Reports’ research and testing. Consumer Reports is a nonprofit that helps consumers evaluate goods and services.
“Unfortunately, there has been a great toll taken on our surface and groundwater sources, so conservation efforts would more than likely have to be employed long term for there to be a more substantial effect.”
Yes, businesses and governments should play a part in water conservation by, respectively, producing goods “water efficiently” and allocating water in a sustainable, equitable way, Hogeboom said.
But “addressing the multifaceted water crises is a shared responsibility. No one actor can solve it, nor is there a silver bullet,” he added. “We need all actors to play their part.”
Contrary to what you might think, the water used directly in and around the home makes up a minor portion of the total water footprint of a consumer, Hogeboom said.
“The bulk — typically at least 95% — is indirect water use, water use that is hidden in the products we buy, the clothes we wear and the food we eat,” Hogeboom said. “Cotton, for instance, is a very thirsty crop.”
Of the 300-plus gallons of water the average American family uses every day at home, however, roughly 70% of this use occurs indoors, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency — making the home another important place to start cutting your use.
Here are some ways to reduce your water footprint as you move from room to room and outdoors.
Since the kitchen involves dishwashing, cooking and one of the biggest water guzzlers — your diet — it’s a good place to start.
An old kitchen faucet can release 1 to 3 gallons of water per minute when running at full blast, according to Consumer Reports. Instead of rinsing dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, scrape food into your trash or compost bin. Make sure your dishwasher is fully loaded so you only do as many wash cycles as necessary and make the most use of the water.
With some activities you can save water by not only using less but also upgrading the appliances that deliver the water. Dishwashers certified by Energy Star, the government-backed symbol for energy efficiency, are about 15% more water-efficient than standard models, according to Consumer Reports.
If you do wash dishes by hand, plug up the sink or use a wash basin so you can use a limited amount of water instead of letting the tap run.
If you plan on eating frozen foods, thaw them in the fridge overnight instead of running water over them. For drinking, keep a pitcher of water in the fridge instead of running the faucet until the water’s cool — and if you need to do that to get hot water, collect the cold water and use it to water plants.
Cook foods in as little water as possible, which can also retain flavor, according to the University of Toronto Scarborough’s department of physical and environmental sciences.
When it comes to saving water via what you eat, generally animal products are more water-intensive than plant-based alternatives, Hogeboom said.
“Go vegetarian or even better vegan,” he added. “If you insist on meat, replace red meat by pig or chicken, which has a lower water footprint than beef.”
It takes more than 1,800 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef, Consumer Reports’ Whitehurst said.
The bathroom is the largest consumer of indoor water, as the toilet alone can use 27% of household water, according to the EPA. You can cut use here by following this adage: “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.”
“Limiting the amount of toilet flushes — as long as it is urine — is not problematic for hygiene,” Whitehurst said. “However, you do have to watch the amount of toilet paper to avoid clogging your pipes. If there is solid waste or feces, then flush the toilet immediately to avoid unsanitary conditions.”
Older toilets use between 3.5 and 7 gallons of water per flush, but WaterSense-labeled toilets use up to 60% less. WaterSense is a partnership program sponsored by the EPA.
“There’s probably more to gain by having dual flush systems so you don’t waste gallons for small flushes,” Hogeboom said.
By turning off the sink tap when you brush your teeth, shave or wash your face, you can save more than 200 gallons of water monthly, according to the EPA.
Cut water use further by limiting showers to five minutes and eliminating baths. Shower with your partner when you can. Save even more water by turning it off when you’re shampooing, shaving or lathering up, Consumer Reports suggests.
Replacing old sink faucets or showerheads with WaterSense models can save hundreds of gallons of water per year.
Laundry rooms account for nearly a fourth of household water use, according to the EPA. Traditional washing machines can use 50 gallons of water or more per load, but newer energy- and water-conserving machines use less than 27 gallons per load.
You can also cut back by doing full loads (but not overstuffing) and choosing the appropriate water level and soil settings. Doing the latter two can help high-efficiency machines use only the water that’s needed. If you have a high-efficiency machine, use HE detergent or measure out regular detergent, which is more sudsy and, if too much is used, can cause the machine to use more water, according to Consumer Reports.
Nationally, outdoor water use accounts for 30% of household use, according to the EPA. This percentage can be much higher in drier parts of the country and in more water-intensive landscapes, particularly in the West.
If you prefer to have a landscape, reduce your outdoor use by planting only plants appropriate for your climate or ones that are low-water and drought-resistant.
“If maintained properly, climate-appropriate landscaping can use less than one-half the water of a traditional landscape,” the EPA says.
The biggest water consumers outside are automatic irrigation systems, according to the EPA. To use only what’s necessary, adjust irrigation controllers at least once per month to account for weather changes. WaterSense irrigation controllers monitor weather and landscape conditions to water plants only when needed.
Former President John Dramani Mahama has expressed reservations over the administration of elections in Ghana compared to that of Nigeria.
Mr Mahama, who is on a pre-election tour to Nigeria under the auspices of the West African Elders Forum (WAEF), was impressed with the faith that all the candidates and parties have in the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) of Nigeria.
He indicated that every political party in Nigeria has testified that INEC has acknowledged and taken their concerns into account.
He lamented that same cannot be attributed to Ghana’s Electoral Commission (EC). According to him, the EC used to be amongst the top election administration organisations in the world.
“I can’t say the same for my Electoral Commission (EC), which was once among the top election administration organizations in the world,” he said.
Mr. Mahama bemoaned what he called “hostility” meted out by the “EC and her other Commissioners” to the NDC, saying he wishes the EC could inspire the same level of confidence in all parties like the INEC.
However, the former president believes that his wish would remain so due to what he described as the EC’s rejection of all efforts by the National Peace Council to organize a meeting between the Commission and the two major political parties, the NDC and the NPP.
“Regrettably, I am not hopeful this will happen when we have an EC that has blatantly spurned all efforts by the National Peace Council to host a meeting between the Commission and the two major political parties, the NDC and NPP,” he said.
Former President John Dramani Mahama heads The West African Elders Forum (WAEF) in a duty to ensure a peaceful election as Nigeria seeks to elect a new president.
The Forum consists of former leaders in the sub – region including former President of Nigeria , Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, former Beninese President, Boni Yayi, Fatoumata Tambajang, former Vice President of the Gambia, former Burkinabe prime minister and president of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Kadre Ouedraogo and Dr. Erastus Mwencha, former Deputy Chair of the African Union (AU).
Mr. Mahama is expected to be on the ground for the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections as well as the March 11, 2023, state elections.
The Agriculture Ministry has guaranteed that all agriculture colleges across the country would receive a budgetary allocation each year.
This according to the Ministry, is in line with efforts to keep the legacy of Modernising Agriculture in Ghana.
According to Deputy Agric Minister, Yaw Frimpong Addo, maintaining facilities of these institutions is the only way to ensure that policies like Technical Education Development for Modernised Agriculture in Ghana (TEDMAG) do not die out.
Speaking at the final stakeholder meeting of the TEDMAG project, Mr. Frimpong Addo indicated that the project has been a success and government will continue to allocate funds to agriculture colleges.
“Once these facilities have been upgraded, it is up to the ministry to put it in the annual budget for maintenance. This is important because if we’re able to maintain these facilities, it will be with us for a long time and that would be good for country,” he said.
The Government of Canada in 2017 implemented the TEDMAG Project. The 135-million-dollar project was to revamp curriculum at agric colleges and complement Ghana’s modernising agriculture agenda.
Head of Cooperation at the High Commission of Canada in Ghana, Kathleen Flynn-Dapaah emphasised that the TEDMAG project prioritised empowering women along the agriculture value chain.
“The governments of Canada and Ghana have been working under this project to promote gender equality. Through our partnership with government of Ghana and non-governmental organisations, women in agriculture in Ghana are empowered in various ways. They have higher levels of financial autonomies allowing them to buy lands, to purchase rudimentary agro-processing machines, to expand their agro-processing activities and with the extra resources to improve their homes,” she intimated.
One of the beneficiaries, Cedonia Akanpisi, a student of Damongo Agriculture College shared how the project has impacted her life.
“TEDMAG has helped in changing the negative perception of agric. They say agric is the backbone of an economy but I believe it’s the oxygen of an economy and TEDMAG has contributed in impacting great zeal and passion for agriculture,” she said.
The Technical Education Development for Modernised Agriculture in Ghana Project ran from 2017 to 2022.
A disruptive passenger forced an American Airlines flight to divert to Raleigh-Durham International Airport on Wednesday, according to the North Carolina airport.
The airport issued a statement saying that at at 3:41 p.m., flight AA 3444 from Jacksonville to Washington, DC, diverted to RDU because of a noisy passenger. “After landing, the aircraft was pointed towards gate C9, where law enforcement climbed aboard and apprehended the culprit.”
The airport said on Friday that the misdemeanour charges against the traveller, Tiffany Miles, have subsequently been dropped.
“After continued investigation regarding the circumstances surrounding the incident and review of eyewitness statements, plus in-depth consultation with the Wake County District Attorney, RDU law enforcement have dismissed the charges. The dismissal of the charges does not preclude further action by the appropriate federal agencies,” RDU said.
Initial reports of the incident suggested that the passenger was attempting to enter the cockpit.
In scanner audio from Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority Police, officers can be heard saying the passenger “tried to breach the cockpit” and was “being somewhat restrained by the flight crew and other passengers.”
The Federal Aviation Administration told CNN on Thursday that the passenger ran at the cockpit door.
Miles told CNN affiliate WRAL she was suffering from “high anxiety,” and she denied rushing at the cockpit. She said she was getting up to use the bathroom after getting into an argument with a flight attendant.
“What person in their right mind would go up to the cockpit while the pilot was flying the plane?” Miles said. “It doesn’t make sense,” Miles told WRAL. The argument was over alcoholic beverage service, which was not available on the flight.
The FBI said Wednesday its Charlotte, North Carolina, office is investigating and “will consult with the US Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of North Carolina to determine if federal charges will be filed.”
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tweeted Wednesday night that he was briefed on “a Level 4 disruption” on the American Airlines flight.A Level 4 disruption is an “attempted or actual breach of the flight deck,” according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The FAA said in a tweet Wednesday that they are working on a rule that would require new planes to have a second barrier to the flight deck.
“Last year, we made progress to require new planes to have a second barrier to the flight deck after the rule stalled under the previous administration. We’re working quickly to issue the final rule,” the FAA said.
Last year there were more than 2,300 reports of unruly passenger behavior, according to FAA statistics. Of those, 80 cases were referred to the FBI for criminal review.
The Chairperson of Ghana’s Electoral Commission, Mrs. Jean Mensa, has expressed optimism that the Nigerian election on Saturday, February 25, 2023, will be credible, transparent, free, and fair.
In an interview with GBC News Correspondent Edward Nyarko, Mrs. Mensa said her engagement with the Independent National Electoral Commission of Nigeria indicates that all stakeholders are prepared to ensure the elections turn out to be one of the best in Nigeria’s history.
Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa, will hold presidential elections on Febuary 25, 2023 amid growing dissatisfaction in the nation due to deteriorating security and economic hardship. Would any of the front-runners, the majority of whom have spent decades in politics, be able to change the course of the nation?
Muhammadu Buhari, the outgoing president of Nigeria, is leaving office after nearly eight years in charge amid instability and intense agitation, as many people are unable to access the money they require to purchase food due to a bungled roll-out of new banknotes.
But the cash crisis is not the only problem Nigerians face, with the last year being marked by struggle and tragedy, including high inflation and deadly attacks by gunmen against innocent civilians.
Mr Buhari’s supporters say he has done his best and highlight achievements, such as his work on infrastructure projects and attempts to combat violent extremism. But even his own wife, Aisha Buhari, has apologised to the Nigerian people for falling short of their expectations.
Allegations that all vehicles involved in Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) operations have been grounded, have been refuted by the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA).
Managers say 33 of the buses are currently working, with 21 grounded.
Out of the 60 buses received, five got burnt completely on suspected arson and one had an accident- beyond repairs.
Branch Manager of BRT-Aayalolo, Sampson Adu Larbi, says most of the grounded buses were brought from Accra with minor faults which demanded the attention of the supplier.
In 2018, three of the BRT buses were brought to Kumasi for piloting. Later in the year, additional 57 buses were supplied.
Managers say Kumasi was not part of the initial plan of the Bus Rapid Transport, hence the challenges in management.
Access to parking space for the buses and a terminal at the central business district for boarding became a major hindrance.
Amidst the difficulties, STC Ghana granted them a temporary parking space at their Oforikrom yard.
Kumasi Branch Manager of BRT-Aayalolo, Sampson Adu Larbi, says competing with other commercial vehicles has been challenging, but the company is successfully managing 33 of the buses in Greater Kumasi.
Kumasi Mayor, Samuel Pyn, says the BRT is expecting World Bank support to get a dedicated route for the buses, including a terminal at Sokoban to operate fully in Greater Kumasi.
“STC shut-down our plans to get where the buses are parked develop, they say it wasn’t part of the initial agreement, and that is true. We only negotiated to park the buses not to operate from there. Currently, we are working with World Bank to ensure the BRT buses fully operate in greater Kumasi”. at the STC yard
Meanwhile, there are no plans of getting the 21 grounded buses back on the roads. Some of their tyres and other parts were removed.
The initiators of the BRT in Ghana failed to train mechanics to fix faulty buses.
Mr. Adu Larbi says the Scania Company is expected to help fix the faulty buses.
He also seeks the permit of the Transport Ministry to auction the burnt buses.
“Currently, we have about 21 buses being grounded, before the buses came from Accra to Kumasi here, some of them had various faults and these are electronic buses. So the parts are not ready in our local market, we need the manufacturer which is Scania to come and fix them. Communication has gone higher that, we have received response from them and very soon they will come and fix them,” he explained.
Thursday to commemorate one year since the start of Russia’s extensive invasion, with one side showing three soldiers hoisting the flag.
The depiction of two hands tied together with tape on the reverse of the 20 hryvnia ($0.54) note appears to be a reference to the alleged war crimes that Kiev accuses Russian soldiers of conducting in Ukraine. The accusations have been refuted by Moscow.
ernor Andriy Pyshnyi holds the banknotes. Credit: Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters
“To mark the anniversary of the war, we decided to launch a commemorative banknote which will depict on a small piece of paper a year of emotions, patterns, content and iconic things,” Andriy Pyshnyi, governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, said during a presentation at the central bank in Kyiv.
The central bank has worked hard since the invasion on February 24 last year to keep the economy afloat and maintain stability.
Last summer, it pegged the hryvnia at 36.57 to the dollar, and it has intervened regularly on the foreign exchange market to support the currency.
Thanks to billions of dollars in foreign aid from Western partners, Ukraine’s hard currency reserves have grown to nearly $30 billion, slightly higher than at the start of the war.
Ukraine has also imposed sanctions on Russian financial institutions.
Pyshnyi said the new note, which contains innovative security features, will have a circulation of 300,000.
Central bank officials said it took about eight months to design and produce the note, and the bank plans a series of commemorative notes to provide a visual record of the war.
They said they were already planning new notes to commemorate victory and Ukraine’s reconstruction.
“During this year, Ukrainians have realized their force, their significance, their ability not only to withstand but also to win, to win without forgiving a single military crime, a single ruined house,” Pyshnyi said. “This victory will be at a very high price but it will happen and it will be ours.”
President Muhammadu Buhari has taken his turn to cast his ballot in the ongoing presidential election.
The outgoing President did so in his hometown of Daura, Katsina State. He voted alongside his wife, Aisha.
The President, whose two-term tenure of eight years ends on May 29, 2023, is a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and a campaigner for his party’s flag bearer, Bola Tinubu.
Addressing reporters, the President urged Nigerians to vote for the candidate of their choice, adding that nobody has more than one vote.
Nationwide, officials of the country’s electoral agency, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) have arrived at some of the 176,606 polling units scattered across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory that make up Nigeria.
Accreditation and voting commenced around 08:30 am in some polling units in parts of Nigeria as the 87.2 million voters with Permanent Voter Cards go to the polls to elect a new president and members of the country’s National Assembly.
In response to rampant instability and gang violence in the nation, Canada will deploy Royal Canadian Navy ships off the coast of Haiti in the upcoming weeks, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Thursday.
During a conference of Caribbean leaders on Thursday, Trudeau said from Nassau, Bahamas, that the ships will perform surveillance, gather intelligence, and maintain a maritime presence off the coast of Haiti in the coming weeks.
In order for the Haitian people to live in a secure and democratic society, he continued, “we must work on long-term solutions that will restore order and security, permit crucial help to flow to those who urgently need it, and establish the circumstances for free and fair elections.
While Trudeau said it was important to confront the “severity” of the situation, Canada stopped short of pledging any type of military presence on the ground.
The Caribbean nation has been thrown into chaos over the past year by relentless anti-government protests, rampant kidnappings and a recent resurgence of deadly cholera.
Large swathes of capital city Port-au-Prince are run by organized criminal groups, and last October, Haiti’s government and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the international community to consider deploying forces to Haiti to address growing humanitarian and security crises in the country.
Earlier in February, Canada’s government reiterated that it would continue to contribute aid to Haiti and in recent weeks has deployed a Royal Canadian Air Force surveillance aircraft to the Caribbean nation to support “efforts to disrupt the activities of gangs in Haiti and demonstrate Canada’s commitment to the Haitian people.”
Canada said it was committed to supporting the Haitian National Police but has so far ruled out sending any kind of armed force to the country, with Trudeau tweeting in recent days that he would be supporting “Haitian-led” solutions.
The Convention People’s Party (CPP) has launched the 57th anniversary of its Remembrance Day with a call on the youth to shun the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).
The Chairperson of the party, Nana Akosua Frimponmaa Sarpong Kumankumah, who made the call, said both the NPP and the NDC had for the past 30 years proven to the citizens that they were incapable of handling the affairs of the country.
“We are here today to say that the CPP has opened its doors. Don’t waste your time. Don’t vote and waste your energy anymore in service of the duopoly. They do not have a plan,” she added.
The Remembrance Day is celebrated annually by the CPP to commemorate the overthrow of the founder of the party, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, in a military coup on February 24, 1966.
The coup was led by Lieutenant-General Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka and Lieutenant General Akwasi Amankwaa Afrifa.
The month-long commemoration would include programmes aimed at showcasing and recognising the achievements and vision of the country’s first president.
Blame, 800 positions
Nana Sarpong Kumankumah Frimpongmaa also blamed Ghanaians for the lack of development and economic crisis in the country because they continuously voted representatives of the two parties (NPP and NDC) into office.
“It is about time that Ghanaians stopped totally blaming the leadership of this country. We also need to be blamed because we keep putting them there. But I don’t want to blame you the youth too much because you have been fed with lies your whole lives,” she said.
She, therefore, advised them to join and take over the party in order to have a say in their own affairs at the national level.
“We are not asking you to join as mere followers and supporters. There are about 800 positions available in the party at this very moment so you are coming on as executives who will run the party because we the older generation, our time is over,” she explained.
The Seven-Year Plan
The Chairperson recalled that before his overthrow, Dr Nkrumah was three years into the implementation of a seven-year developmental plan that brought about a period of economic growth and stability.
She noted that under those three years, the Nrumah-led administration had established about 400 factories, extensively constructed rail and telephone lines and among others made significant gains in health and education.
Nana Sarpong Kumankumah, therefore, urged the youth and the entire populace to throw their weight behind the CPP in the 2024 general election to restore the economy to its former glory.
Accountability
In a related development, the CPP said it was time for Ghanaians to make the NPP government accountable.
“We the people should demand answers to how our resources are dissipated. It is unfortunate that all this while after the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah we as Ghanaians/Leaders cannot manage our own affairs but have to depend on our foreign partners for a lifeline to survive. Indeed, we are in a sorry state,” a statement signed by the General Secretary of the party, Nana Yaa Akyempim Jantuah, on the 57th anniversary of the overthrow of Dr Nkrumah, said.
It said 57 years after the unfortunate 24th February Coup d’état that ousted the CPP government led by Dr Nkrumah, Ghana had stopped working and that the nation was at a standstill and nothing was being done to salvage the socio-economic problems Ghanaians found themselves in.
“While the CPP was doing everything possible to lay the foundation for a prosperous and an economic independent nation, the local imperialists were busy with their foreign counterparts to stake a coup to oust the CPP out of government.”
“The country is bleeding and being woefully mismanaged. We are broke and have to resort to taking money from the vulnerable in society to be able to even qualify to participate in an IMF programme because our debt portfolio is scary to look at and very unsustainable,” it said, adding that “we have a burden hanging on our neck, and saddled with a very unsympathetic government which does not care about the well-being of the Ghanaian”.
The statement said it was sad that the country was going to ask for a debt cancellation from China, a country that was its protégé 57 years ago.
“What went wrong and whatever we did wrong must be corrected by the people of Ghana in due course by voting the CPP back into power to continue with the good works for the country.”
A young man suspected to have stolen a phone was nearly lynched after he was grabbed by citizens in an attempt to resell the phone.
According to reports, he was beaten by some persons for allegedly stealing a phone of a lady he gave a lift to.
According to a tweep named Dr Tony Brown, the culprit, after taking the lady’s phone headed to Circle to trade it for cash.
Luck eluded the young man as the shop he visited was where the victim worked.
In a video gone viral on the bird app – Twitter, the victim was shocked as the culprit – in a yellow hoodie denied knowing her.
“You don’t know me?” the lady was heard in the background asking the suspected thief amidst beatings.
“I nor know am,” he responded in Pidgin English after he was forced to answer the question.
Dr Tony Brown who shared the video asserted that, “You man be the reason why girls shun dey sit for DV cars inside. He go rent DV cars (Benz, you know the flashy ones) and pick only women. Only for him to point gun at you in the car to take your phone…You girls for stay woke!”
He added that, “After taking one girls phone, he took the phone to circle to sell not knowing the shop he entered is where the girl also works. Chairman do yawa.”
President Akufo-Addo has appointed a new CEO of the Ghana Cylinder Manufacturing Company.
Madam Genevieve Sackey has been named to take over the role following the resignation of Madam Frances Essiam.
This nomination is contained in a letter dated February, 21st and signed by the Executive Secretary to the President, Nana Bediatuo Asante.
“Kindly take the necessary steps to regularise the said appointment in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Companies Act 2019 (Act 992) and the regulations of the Company,” portions of the release stated.
Nana Bediatuo Asante extended to the new MD, “the President’s best wishes.”
Genevieve Sackey’s nomination comes after the immediate past CEO, Frances Essiam resigned.
Explaining the rationale behind her resignation, Madam Ewurabena Essiam said she took the decision because of interference in her work by the Minister for Energy, Dr Matthew Opoku-Prempeh.
According to her, she decided to enter into an agreement with Ghana Gas – a decision she claimed the Energy Minister kicked against.
She alleged that, Dr Opoku-Prempeh told her that another agency has been asked to take over the management of GCMCL.
This development, a peeved Madam Essiam, maintained is an affront to the hard work she has put into making the company a viable one.
“I am a very principled person, so I have resigned for him to take over and do what he wants to do,” she stated in an interview on Asempa FM’sEkosii Sen programme on Friday.
The electoral body moved many voters from some polling units to others to decongest units that were considered overpopulated.
Such reassigned voters had been informed by INEC through text messages that they had been moved to units not far from their original voting units, and they were advised to visit a link provided by the electoral umpire to confirm the new polling units.
For several days, the body remained across the street from Ivan Fedorov‘s home. Fedorov never discovered who the deceased man was because he was afraid to venture outside. He is only aware that he was a civilian.
Fedorov told CNN that “He was merely a bystander who was shot.”
Fedorov, 90, and his wife Iryna, 84, have spent their whole marriage living in the same home on Yablunska Street in Bucha, the Ukrainian hamlet that has come to be associated with Russian atrocities and suspected war crimes. Bucha is located just north of Kyiv.
After conquering Bucha in early April, the Ukrainian army discovered at least 20 civilian bodies on their street, which was named for apple trees. Some people’s hands were restrained behind their backs.
A year has passed since Russian troops rolled in and the city is trying hard to move on from the horrors it endured. There’s construction work on every corner and the clean-up operation has almost finished. The residents, however, remain scarred.
Just around the corner from the Fedorovs’ house is Vokzalna Street, where a column of Russian military vehicles got stuck during intense fighting last March.
Almost every house on Vokzalna was destroyed and most are now being rebuilt with the help of foreign donors and volunteer construction workers, who work for minimum wage, food, and lodging.
Long wooden beams have recently been delivered to multiple homes on the street; some still lie in neat piles by the roadside, others are already up on the roofs that are being restored.
Kostiantyn Momotov’s house – where the 70-year-old man has lived for almost four decades – was hit multiple times during the month-long occupation. When the Russians finally withdrew and he started clearing out the debris, he found body parts among the rubble in his yard.
“Five houses to the north of mine caught fire from the burning vehicles and ammo and their soldiers were blown to pieces. Their hands and legs and pieces were all over,” he said.
The money and the volunteers come and go, so he is prepared for the repairs to take a long time. “I have built enough in my life. Now it’s up to my grandchildren,” he said.
Efforts to clean up and rebuild Bucha started almost immediately after the town was liberated and some areas seem almost back to normal. But Father Andriy Halavin, the Orthodox priest from the town’s Church of St. Andrew, says the recovery is mostly superficial.
“When you look at [Bucha] now you may not even notice that something happened,” he said. “So, a lot of people who come to Bucha now, they won’t understand what everyone was talking about. The sky is blue, the grass is green, the birds are chirping … what war crimes are you even talking about?”
Bucha officials are trying to find ways to memorialize the events that took place there a year ago. Photographs taken in the first days after the liberation are on display in a separate hall in the church. Many are extremely graphic, depicting victims of some of the worst atrocities.
On a short stretch of scorched land by the road leading to Bucha is a graveyard of blown-up Russian tanks and burnt military vehicles. It has become something of an attraction in recent months, a place to which Ukrainians make a pilgrimage to see what victory looks like. The Bucha district authorities are now building a fence and an official entrance to the site, an attempt to make the space more “civilized.”
Father Andriy tended to his congregation throughout the darkest times. He was there when the tanks rolled in and later during the exhumations of bodies from mass graves, including one found in his own churchyard.
“It’s easier to restore the material stuff. We still don’t understand the psychological state of people. Not just Bucha residents, but all Ukrainians. Because there’s not a single family, not a single person who was able to go through all these challenges without any psychological damage,” he said.
He said each person from the community was suffering in his or her own way. And each was trying to find a way to come to terms with the past.
Tetiana Yeshchenko, 63, said she found relief in a place she’d never have expected.
Before the war, she said, the only prayer she knew was “Our Father.” So when Russian troops took over the town and Yeshchenko decided she needed to pray, she just repeated it over and over.
“The louder the explosions, the louder I was praying,” she said. “When I heard the shooting, my knees and my hands started shaking and I started praying louder and with time the shivering would pass.”
She prayed when the Russians killed her dog and when they searched her home. She prayed when the soldiers spoke to her four-year-old granddaughter, who told them boldly that they should go away. She prayed when family members were told they could evacuate, only to be turned back when they tried.
Yeshchenko is convinced the prayers were what got her through the worst of last year. She said that after the liberation, when the immediate danger had passed and she was left with her thoughts, she descended into a deep depression; at this point, she turned to praying again.
A year ago, Yeshchenko rarely went to church and didn’t consider religion a big part of her life. Now she spends her days working alongside Father Andriy at St. Andrew’s. She sells candles, rosaries, and icons framed in gold, and patiently speaks to visiting delegations about the impacts of the war.
She continues praying — including for her recently mobilized son who is currently fighting in Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine. “Working here helps. And praying. I come home and read ‘Our Father’ 40 times,” she said.
Before Bucha became synonymous with unimaginable war crimes, it was a quiet, leafy place, the kind of green suburb with good schools where young families aspire to live.
For 31-year-old Nastia Mykolaietz and her husband, that aspiration became reality just four months before the war started. They bought an apartment in Bucha, right next to the modern Epicentr shopping mall. They moved in and started renovating the bathroom. They were enjoying their new life.
The idyll didn’t last long. On February 24, the family was woken up at 5 a.m. by Mykolaietz’s mother, who called to urge them to leave immediately. They grabbed a few things — some clothes, a laptop and a potty for the little one — and ran. The plan was to take the kids to safety as quickly as possible, then return for more clothes and their cat, called Lisa. But they never made it back that day. Fighting in the area became too intense.
They returned 47 days later, expecting to find their apartment destroyed and the cat dead.
“We arrived and she was there, completely bald and skinny, but alive,” Mykolaietz said. “She ate from the trash. The frozen berries in my fridge melted and that was the puddle she was drinking from. She was covered in berries.”
Returning was difficult for the family. The mall next to their home had been completely destroyed, shops were closed and supplies hard to find.
Mykolaietz went to a Unicef help-point to see if she could get a doctor’s consultation for her five-year-old son. After a few visits to the center, Mykolaietz, a former kindergarten teacher, found out there was a vacancy as a carer for childrenand took the job. Now she spends her days with local children, many of them deeply traumatized by the events of last year.
“My son is still scared of the noise of the airplane,” she said. “Today he woke up, he took his mask, his toy gun and said, ‘This is my checkpoint, and I will defend it.’”
Lego is by far the most popular toy at the play center. The kids like building guns, military cars and battleships. In the playground, “air raid” is the favorite game.
“They run around playing and screaming ‘Air raid, everyone go to shelters!’” Mykolaietz said.
Iryna and Ivan Fedorov stayed in Bucha throughout the occupation, even as they sent their children and grandchildren away. They hunkered down with Iryna’s disabled sister and their next-door neighbor, who suffered a broken arm when a missile hit her house.
“We were cooking food outdoors, in our yard, on the fire. I’m cooking and something is flying over my head and whistling. But come what may, we thought,” Iryna said.
They didn’t hide during the shelling, saying they didn’t see the point.
“Where would we hide? In the house? Then we would be under the rubble and no one would even find us. At least if it happens in the yard, people passing by might notice the bodies lying in the yard,” Iryna said.
The couple survived, but many did not.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office said Wednesday it had identified 91 Russian soldiers responsible for alleged war crimes in Bucha.
“During the occupation, the Russian army committed more than 9,000 war crimes in the Bucha district of Kyiv region, and more than 1,700 civilians were killed, including about 700 in Bucha,” the office said on Twitter. “So far, 91 Russian military personnel involved in these crimes have been identified. The work on bringing all those involved to justice is ongoing.”
International investigators from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe concluded last July that the atrocities committed by Russian troops in Bucha amounted to crimes against humanity and said there was “credible evidence” suggesting violations of “even the most fundamental human rights.” The experts said that photographic and video evidence “appear to show that Russian forces carried out targeted, organized killings of civilians in Bucha.”
The Russian government has consistently denied the accusations and claimed the images were “a hoax.”
Father Andriy said nearly everyone in town knows someone who died.
To the world, these people are known as the “Bucha bodies,” he said. “For us, these are our relatives, our friends, people we know.”
Not far from his church, six burnt bodies were found after the liberation.
“For journalists, these are just the burnt remains. But for us, this was a family of a singer, who used to sing in our church. He had sung here for many years. How can we ever forget this? We have to talk about this. This is our pain,” he said.
Ghanaian actor and producer, Samuel Ofori has disclosed how a timely intervention by former Black Stars player Christian Atsu saved his life.
He says he owes his life to the late Ghanaian footballer, Christian Atsu, who came to his aid in the nick of time.
The actor revealed for the first time that he would have been long dead but for a single phone call Atsu placed to him right on time when he was about committing suicide.
In a self-taken video, Mr Ofori revealed at that time, he was depressed following some false accusations against him in Germany which made him trend for the wrong reasons.
According to him, Ghanaians descended heavily on him without hearing his side of the story, and he felt his good reputation was over and he was better off dead.
However, as he sat thinking of how to end it all, he said Atsu called to check up on him and inquired about the multiple headlines he read on social media.
“I was so frustrated at that time that I neglected all calls, but when I saw his, I answered. He was worried about me and asked for my side of the story. After I narrated everything to him, he motivated me to ignore because it was a trivial issue. What he did not know was that if that call had not come, I would have drank something poisonous. Just the single call changed my life.”
Not only did he comfort him, Mr Ofori said Atsu requested for his Ghanaian wife’s number and explained the entire situation to her.
Due to Atsu’s intervention, the matter was quickly resolved and he went on to make the most of his life.
On how his relationship with Atsu started, the filmmaker said Atsu called to compliment his talent after watching his 2019 movie, Make Up Girls starring Jessica Williams.
Since then, they were the very best of friends until Atsu lost his life under the rubble after an earthquake in Turkey.
This Friday, Yaryna Arieva and Sviatoslav Fursin won’t be commemorating their first wedding anniversary.
The Ukrainian couple were hitched on the same day that Russia began a full-scale invasion of their nation. Ukraine is still at war a year later. People are still dying as a result of fallen Russian rockets.
They claim that there isn’t much to celebrate. At her and Fursin’s Kyiv house, Arieva told CNN, “A year has gone and all the memories are starting to come back.”
She said that, for months, she avoided wearing a suit she got just days before the invasion because it was bringing back memories of the darkest moments of her life.
“It’s not the memories you want to have in your head all the time,” she said.
Arieva, 22, and Fursin, 25, rushed to tie the knot in St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery on February 24, months before their planned wedding in May. They wanted to be together, whatever came next. The place has since become a favorite spot for visiting foreign dignitaries on their show-of-support trips to Kyiv. Most recently, US President Joe Biden was photographed there with Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky during his surprise visit on Monday.
“I remember my wedding ceremony and that feeling of not knowing anything. That unpredictable and really scary future,” Arieva said.
The same day, they collected their weapons and signed up as volunteers with their local unit of territorial defense force, the volunteer branch of Ukraine’s armed forces, determined to defend their city. Arieva serves as an elected Kyiv City councilor, a part-time unpaid government position that meant she was given a weapon.
Fursin was immediately sent toward the front lines. He told CNN he saw a bus full of volunteers and simply jumped in, unsure where it was headed.
He and other volunteers were forming the second line of defense north of Kyiv, in Irpin, Hostomel and other areas that quickly became key battlegrounds.
“The first night, we were totally not ready. We didn’t have any trenches, nothing,” he said.
Fursin was put in charge of a group of 10 people, mostly other very young men. His qualifications? He was the only one of the 11 who had held an automatic weapon before.
“The commander watched how I handled the weapon and said: ‘Take these people and make shelters and ambush positions and think about which way you will run,’” Fursin related. “We were digging trenches. Just digging, digging, digging, all night.”
Arieva, meanwhile, was back at the base of their territorial defense unit in Kyiv, trying to be helpful.
“The first night when I was waiting for my husband, when he left for his first battle, I think it was the scariest night of my life, because of course, I couldn’t call him because he had to turn his phone off,” she said.
“I wasn’t religious but at that moment I prayed to all [the] gods I know for him to come back safe.”
The next month and a half is a blur.
Fursin kept going on missions. He was mostly manning checkpoints and forming a second line of defense, but he did find himself face-to-face with Russian troops a couple of times and was trained in firing anti-tank missiles. He refuses to go into details beyond saying he had used his weapons during that time. “We were told not to talk about it,” he said.
Arieva, meanwhile, was working in a tiny office with eight other people, 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. every day. There were three small tables with barely enough space for the computers, let alone the people. Bounty and Snickers bars, cigarettes and tobacco sticks became hard currency during that time.
They both admit the experience was a tough one.
“In our dreams, when we were imagining it, we were so heroic and strong. And the reality was that we washed once a week because there were no showers in there and it wasn’t very pleasant, [with] the lack of sleep and sometimes food,” she said.
Still, they look back at the time with pride and fondness.
“Everyone forgot who they are, if they were very famous or very, very rich or very [influential] politicians, they were just helping each other, standing together smoking and not knowing what was going on,” Arieva said.
Arieva said she quit smoking just days before the war began, but her determination didn’t last.
“I said I will quit on victory day, but I might have to try earlier,” she said.
When Russian troops withdrew from the Kyiv region in early April, Arieva and Fursin’s time in the territorial defense came to an end. The military decided it needed to make the volunteer units more professional and only those with previous military experience were allowed to stay.
Fursin and Arieva were asked to leave the force.
“It was hard to become civilians again, because we didn’t want to be protected, we wanted to do something,” she said.
They tried to enjoy the small things, like the first cappuccino since the start of the war.
“It was the tastiest thing. That cappuccino with the foam, that beauty, that taste, it [the war] has really made us value things much more,” she said.
For Fursin, last year’s invasion was the second of his life. He grew up in Crimea and was living on the Ukrainian peninsula when Russia forcibly annexed it in 2014. His grandmother was too ill to travel at the time, so they stayed.
“I remember how the place has changed after that. We used to joke that you go to sleep in one country and wake up in another,” he said.
When Fursin’s family finally left Crimea, they settled in Irpin. Just three years later, their home was, once again, invaded by Russian troops.
The couple describes the shock of coming back to Irpin after it was liberated in early April. The town north of Kyiv became the front line during the battle for the capital city. It was here that Ukrainian forces managed to repel the attack.
The family home was still standing, but was severely damaged, with windows shattered and half of the building scorched.
Back in the civilian world, the couple began volunteering, bringing food and basic supplies to liberated settlements north of Kyiv. The demand was so overwhelming that sometimes they had to make multiple trips a day.
“I remember Katyuzhanka, because we brought a lot of bread and macaroni and some pasta sauce and batteries and there was a huge amount of people waiting. We gave out everything we had and we had to go back and bring more bread because more than half [of the] people didn’t get anything and they didn’t have a slice of bread in that town,” Arieva said.
She still remembers people sharing terrifying stories of life under occupation and bursting into tears upon hearing strangers speak Ukrainian.
“It was really … hard to even listen to these stories, it hurts,” she said.
Slowly, life started to return to normal. It was spring, and Kyiv was in full bloom. It really felt like renewal, they said.
They had their official town hall wedding and a small celebration in May, mostly because the deposit was paid and non-refundable. Arieva finally got to introduce her husband to her 97-year-old great-grandmother.
They had both lost their jobs right at the beginning of the invasion. Arieva was working for the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, an observer organization, and Fursin for a housing co-op in Irpin.
As they started running out of money, they decided to focus on work and their studies.
Over the summer, Fursin finally graduated from university. He began his degree in Crimea, but when his family fled the occupied peninsula in 2019, he had to start over. He is now working on and off on software development projects.
Arieva, meanwhile, decided to focus on learning to code. Tech is the only sector that is still growing in Ukraine, because it allows people to work remotely.
But their plan to work and study remotely got derailed when Russia launched a wave of attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in the fall. Working was quickly becoming impossible.
“We would have two hours of electricity, then five hours without electricity, then three hours of electricity, it was really demoralizing,” Arieva said.
“The worst thing about that was that the streets weren’t lit. And not all people use their torches or have [reflective] jackets to be seen on the road. And every week I would see a car crash from my balcony and some people died,” she added.
In the fall, they adopted a cat and called him Kus, Ukrainian for “bite.” Even now, months later, Fursin’s arms are covered in cat scratches.
As Christmas started approaching, the couple, along with their families, decided to switch the date they’d celebrate the Christmas holiday.
Instead of January 7, which marks the birth of Jesus according to the Julian calendar, still used by the Russian Orthodox Church, they celebrated on December 24, which marks the birth of Jesus according to the Gregorian calendar.
“So we had two Christmases in 2022,” Arieva said.
Ukraine’s Orthodox church announced in the fall that it would allow its churches to celebrate Christmas in December.
“It makes more sense. It was more symbolic and I really liked it. And also it feels good that we are not celebrating with Russians anymore,” Arieva said.
The family didn’t have the usual full spread of 12 dishes for Christmas dinner, because the electricity was on for just six hours that day. They cooked Kutia, the traditional Ukrainian porridge-like Christmas meal that consists of wheat or rice, raisins, walnuts, honey and poppy seeds, using the emergency gas cylinder.
As the first anniversary of the war — and their wedding — approaches, Arieva and Fursin are reflecting on how the year has changed them.
Arieva said she is a completely different person. “I became less naive and less childish. And maybe it has made me a little bit stronger. Because what doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger, of course,” she said.
“Only when you see this, you understand the value of life. And for me, this is 100%,” Fursin said. “What we went through together, I understand that [we are] completely different. And that we [continue] to love each other, that, for me, is maybe the biggest sign that it’s true love,” he said.
She explained that female’s ability to venture in that sector would enable them to harness the opportunities the fourth industrial revolution presented.
Ms Boakye gave the advice at the 2023 edition of the Women in TVET Business competition, under the “Invest in Her” project, an initiative by WUSC.
The competition sought to appreciate the efforts of young girls who have contributed to the industry in previous years.
Mrs Boakye said there was the need to create an enabling environment for these young girls to access lucrative and high-growth trades in the country.
”For us our interest is in how to support both supply and demand side actors, training institutions, government, curricular, regulators and the private sector to create an enabling environment for young women to be able to move and navigate these spaces,” she said.
Mrs. Boakye stated that the project aimed at creating a better environment for aspiring entrepreneurs to equip them with the needed skills and also establish themselves to motivate other young women who would want to take up the challenge.
The Project Director urged the young entrepreneurs to give off their best in their fields despite the challenges they encounter.
Mrs Kosi Yankey-Ayeh, Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Enterprise Agency (GEA), commended WUSC for their commitment towards supporting young females to venture into TVET through it’s “Invest in Her” project.
“It is because mostly, it is male dominated and because they are told that there is no future there for them, but once they persevere through the process, they are able to achieve far more abundantly than they can think about,” she added.
She stated that GEA was keen on supporting young female entrepreneurs to allow them grow and build their businesses.
Mrs Yankey-Ayeh urged them to take advantage of government’s YouStart Programme as an opportunity to excel in their fields.
Mr. Nelson Amo, the Chief Executive Officer of Innohub Limited, also took the young entrepreneurs through the process of financing their businesses to succeed.
Ms Ruth Kaku and Ellen Asawah of RUTHHELL enterprise in Takoradi were adjudged winners of the 2023 Women in TVET business competition with a reward of 50,000 Ghana cedis.
In all, 13 female entrepreneurs participated in this year’s event.
The “Invest in Her” project aims at improving public and industry attitudes towards women’s participation in high-growth and non-traditional sectors.
Member of Parliament (MP) for Akim Swedru in the Eastern Region, Kennedy Osei Nyarko has said Vice President, Dr. Mahammudu Bawumia poses a threat to the main opposition National Democratic Party (NDC).
Kennedy Osei Nyarko is convinced former President John Dramani Mahama is no competition for Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, when it comes to debating on national issues.
He said, “Dr Bawumia continues to be a nightmare and albatross on the neck of the NDC.”
“He has always taken the biggest opposition party on policies and on innovative ideas implementations. No wonder they will not stop at anything to attack and denigrate him. He is the nightmare of the NDC. We want someone who will take the fight to the opponent and not the one who will rather fight the one fighting the opponent,” Kennedy Osei Nyarko wrote on his official Facebook wall.
“It seems that Dr. Bawumia is a problem for his political rivals. I’ve been involved in Ghanaian politics for a very long time, and I can attest that Dr. Bawumia is one of our country’s top communicators. He is coherent, articulate, and laser-focused.”
He added: “He makes economics very simple. He is able to reduce very complicated issues, so, I see why he represents a problem and a challenge for some people. I think the town hall meeting was a useful exercise.”
Abraham Twasam, elder brother of the late Christian Atsu, has responded to Nana Agradaa’s claims that his brother was into ‘Black magic’ (Juju).
Earlier, when news of the Ghanaian footballer’s demise hit social media, Nana Agradaa claimed that God did not rescue him from the earthquake in Turkey, because he (Christian Atsu) was unrighteous.
The preacher, who used to be a fetish priestess, has since been lambasted by critics including Ajagurajah and Evangelist Diana Asamoah.
Agradaa while addressing her congregants in a viral video said:
“Ask yourself why some people survived and others couldn’t. I always tell people that every human being on this earth should accept Jesus Christ. If deep within, you know you have accepted God, all sorts of disasters will take place but you will survive it. People look at the lighter side of things, they think because certain people are kind so it’s an automatic ticket to be spared from all kinds of things.
“To us, we think Atsu is a complete angel, but it is otherwise in the sight of God. What human beings approve of is not what God approves. If you belong to the world, the world will hail you, but if you belong to God, thousands of angels will back you. You can’t rely on juju, freemason, occults, and so on just because you want to enhance your career and expect to escape judgement.”
But disclosing how the family, including him, feels about such utterances, Christian Atsu’s brother said:
“I have seen and heard what people are saying. The ridiculous stories. Mama Pat also said some but she is a grown woman and I expect her to know better. If I want to match her head-on, it will look as though I don’t respect. She doesn’t know us; she doesn’t know our family.
“Atsu was very young when he travelled to Portugal. He left at age 14 and grew up over there. How will he practice juju? He was nurtured like a white man, so how is it possible to access black magic? It’s because this had happened and everyone is saying what they like. So she also feels that she can share her opinion. We don’t have anything to tell her, it is God who sees and know the heart of men,” he stated in an interview with Dan Kwaku Yeboah TV.
Meanwhile, the one-week observation of the late Christian Atsu is slated for March 4, 2023, at the Agiringanor Astroturf, in Accra. Atsu died in Turkey after an earthquake struck the country killing thousands.
Faulty BVAS has prevented Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike and his wife, Suzette Eberechi Wike from casting their votes.
The INEC Presiding Officer, at their ward 9, unit 7 voting centre, Agatha Abioku, explained that the BVAS machine was experiencing what she called a general technical challenge.
She however stated that technicians were already on their way to fix the problem and apologized for the delay which lasted for about 25 minutes.
Reacting to the delay, Wike expressed disappointment with INEC saying that the electoral body should have ensured that their machines were in good working condition before bringing them to the field.
Samer Sharif, 51, is referring to Salma, his 15-year-old daughter, who saw her mother and sibling die in the earthquake on February 6 and who was mistakenly thought to be orphaned for a few days before being unexpectedly reunited with her father.
Salma, Mohammed, her 10-year-old brother, and his ex-wife were all reported dead after the earthquake, Sharif was informed.
Standing before the building that collapsed on top of his family, in Antakya, southern Turkey, Sharif said that he “met with death at that moment.”
“There is nothing left in Antakya. It’s all gone,” he told CNN.
After sleeping on the streets for two days, Sharif left for Istanbul where he stayed with his sister and her husband.
While there he received some rare good news – his daughter was alive, and recovering in hospital.
The father and daughter were re-united, and while they were relieved, they will never be the same – especially Salma.
And Salma is not the only one.
Around 4.6 million children were living in the 10 Turkish provinces hit by the earthquake, according to UNICEF, and an additional 2.5 million children were affected in neighboring Syria.
UNICEF added that families with children are sleeping in the streets, malls, schools, mosques, bus stations and under bridges, all afraid to sleep indoors should more aftershocks bring buildings down.
While food, tents and caravans with some heating have arrived in the days following the earthquake, says Kazak, there still isn’t enough mental health support, especially for children.
Speaking to CNN’s Zain Asher, a spokesperson for Save the Children relief organization in Turkey, Oben Coban, said that victims are showing clear signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), especially children, many of whom have been left without parents.
“What we are also seeing is that those children who have lost their education, their families, their hopes, they are now struggling to find a reason to keep themselves in this world,” said Coban.
“At the moment, the only thing that can keep them in their lives is hope for the future.”
For victims in Syria, the earthquake is another crisis amid a devastating 12-year civil war.
Children and families who were recovering from PTSD and ongoing trauma from the scars of war are back in survival mode, Dr. Alexandra Chen, a trauma psychologist treating earthquake victims, told CNN.
“For people who have slowly begun to recover and regain a sense of normalcy and rebuilt their lives over the last decade, this has been terrifying and destabilizing for both children and adults,” said Chen. “Some are still in denial while others are experiencing hallucinations.”
The United Nations estimates over 30,000 lives have been lost in the Syrian civil war. People were already struggling to rebuild their lives, while thousands fled the country seeking refuge in nearby countries.
While a semblance of routine had been established before, Chen says the situation has now changed.
“Prior to the earthquake, therapy was not emergency-based, and we had the time and the space to process very difficult things, especially for those who have experienced torture and sexual violence,” she said, adding that “we’re back in emergency mode.”
Chen says that aid workers are also struggling. Between losing their own family members and homes, while rescuing people from the rubble, their mental health has deteriorated amid the ongoing rescue efforts, she said.
Aid workers say that the mental health struggles are clear and are happening amid needs for more food and shelter.
Making matters worse, the risks of further tremors have not gone away.
“Many people do not feel comfortable living inside (intact buildings),” said Arlan Fuller, director of Emergency Response & Preparedness at Project Hope, a US-based non-profit, non-governmental organization that supports healthcare workers in times of crisis. Fuller and Project Hope are currently on the ground in Gaziantep.
“I’ve heard and seen many situations where people do not want to go back inside,” Fuller told CNN, “Or when they are inside, they are constantly focusing on the chandelier, waiting for it to move.”
Many children are clinging to their parents and can’t let go, he added, noting that repeated aftershocks only act as triggers.
Aftershocks continue to be felt across Turkey. Just on Monday, a magnitude 6.3 aftershock struck Turkey’s southern Hatay province, near the Syrian border, killing at least six people and injuring hundreds.
The Turkish Red Crescent previously said it is providing “psychological first aid” to both adults and children impacted by the earthquake, reported the state news agency Anadolu. These include therapy sessions, as well as psychosocial support tents set up by the ministry of family and the ministry of health, added Anadolu.
Salma, 15, remains distraught. She spends most of her time on her phone and refuses to properly eat, her father Samer says.
“She wants to buy those little hot wheels car toys that Hammoudeh (her brother Mohammed’s nickname) loved to put them on her shelf to look at them and remember him,” said Sharif.
“I keep trying to make her laugh, but it’s not like before.”
The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly voted to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine. While the resolution isn’t binding, it sheds light on where nations stand in this conflict one year since it started.
Among Middle East and Arab nations, only Syria rejected the resolution while Algeria, Iran and Sudan abstained. The rest supported it.
Last year, less than a week after Russia’s invasion, the same UN body passed a resolution demanding that Russia withdraw all military forces from Ukraine. During that vote, all Arab and Middle Eastern states voted the same way they did on Thursday except for Iraq, which abstained.
The region has largely made clear that it supports Ukraine’s position in this conflict – publicly at least.
The behind-the-scenes diplomacy over the past year, however, tells a different story. Middle East nations have found themselves in a difficult position, juggling between their obligations to their Western allies and their own interests.
The United Arab Emirates, for example, abstained from a symbolic a UN Security Council resolution condemning the war on February 27 of last year (Russia vetoed that resolution). Less than a week later, it voted in favor of a similar resolution at the General Assembly. UAE officials have said the war demonstrates that the world order is no longer unipolar with the US at its helm. The UAE has also become a safe haven for many Russian citizens and businesses since the war.
Abu Dhabi, along with Saudi Arabia, also counts Russia as an ally in the OPEC+ oil cartel. That alliance allows member states to control the supply of oil, which in turn determines prices. The US warned Saudi Arabia last year that restricting the supply of oil would be tantamount to supporting Russia in the war. That warning fell on deaf ears.
Iran, like Syria, is globally isolated and counts Russia as its main international ally. But the Islamic Republic, whose leaders regularly launch tirades against foreign intervention and imperialism, has abstained from such votes instead of vetoing them as Syria has. This is despite Tehran’s role as a player in the war through its supply of killer drones to Russia.
Israel, too, finds itself in a complicated situation. While it has publicly opposed the war, it has economic, cultural, political and security considerations in its dealings with Russia. What it cares most about with Russia is its influence on Iran and its presence in Syria. Israel regularly carries out airstrikes on Iranian targets in Syria, which it regards as critical to prevent the transfer of missile technology to Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group. It usually communicates with the Russians ahead of those strikes for deconfliction purposes.
By Abbas Al Lawati
Turkey says may experience more aftershocks greater than magnitude 5
Orhan Tatar, Turkey’s general director of Earthquake and Risk Reduction (AFAD) said on Thursday at a press conference that the country may experience more large aftershocks in the coming days, calling on citizens to stay away from damaged buildings. Following the conference, a magnitude 5 aftershock struck the southern Hatay province.
Background: Since the first 7.8 quake on February 6, authorities have registered 7,442 aftershocks AFAD said on Tuesday. Forty-one of them were between 5 and 6 magnitude and 450 of them were between 4 and 5 magnitude.
Why it matters: Aftershocks have been frequent and deadly, have complicated recovery operations and rebuilding efforts and have prevented survivors from returning indoors.
Tunisian president denies racism but repeats view that migration is a plot
Tunisian President Kais Saied has repeated his assertion that an increase of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa was part of a conspiracy to change Tunisia’s demographics and denied criticism by rights groups that his views were racist, Reuters reported.
Background: Saied on Tuesday ordered security forces to halt all illegal immigration into Tunisia and said any undocumented migrants must leave, comments that prompted some strong criticism. Speaking to Interior Minister Tawfiq Charfeddine in a video posted online, Saied said his opponents had twisted his comments in order to spread discord. Rights groups have accused Saied of racism and announced plans to protest.
Why it matters: Tunisia is a major departure point for migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean and over the past year there has been a big increase in the number of Tunisians and other Africans trying to reach Europe.
Oman opens airspace to Israeli airlines in landmark move
The Gulf state of Oman has opened its airspace to Israeli airlines in a landmark move that will cut the carriers’ flights from Israel to Asia by up to two hours. The nation’s civil aviation authority said on Twitter that its “airspace is open for all carriers that meet the requirements of the authority for overflying.” Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen tweeted that it was “another great step toward regional integration” and “a day of celebration for Israel.”
Background: The move follows Saudi Arabia’s decision in July to open its own airspace to Israeli carriers in a deal brokered by the United States. The Israeli foreign ministry said on Thursday that the aviation announcement came after months of talks with Omani authorities.
Why it matters: Israel needed Oman’s approval to use the shorter corridor to Asia. The move is a diplomatic victory for the Netanyahu government, which has made normalization with Arab nations a top priority. Oman has no diplomatic relations with Israel and normalization is a controversial topic due to Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In December, the Gulf state’s elected Shura Council proposed tightening an Israel boycott law.
The US has repatriated 77 looted artifacts to Yemen, including dozens of ancient funerary stones linked to a disgraced New York art dealer and 11 folios from early Qurans.
But as part of a landmark agreement the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC will care for and store the items for at least two years as Yemen remains engulfed in a bitter civil war.
Among the artifacts being returned are 65 funerary stones, known as “stelae,” that date back to the second half of the first millennium BC. Featuring engraved faces, some of the objects contain traces of pigment or inscriptions revealing the names of the deceased.
A museum spokesperson told CNN that the stones were most likely looted from archaeological sites in northwestern Yemen. The Quranic folios are meanwhile thought to date back to the 9th century. An inscribed bronze bowl is also among the cache of artifacts.
The partnership between the Smithsonian and Yemen’s government was announced at a repatriation ceremony hosted by the country’s embassy in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. As part of the agreement, some of the items could be publicly exhibited at the museum, including in its current show “Ancient Yemen: Incense, Art, and Trade.” Yemen’s government will have the option to extend the partnership after two years, depending on the state of unrest in the country.
The country’s ambassador to the United States, Mohammed Al-Hadhrami, said in a statement that “on behalf of the people and Government of Yemen, we are thrilled to see Yemen retaking ownership of its cultural heritage.”
The Jospong Group of Companies (JGC) and other interested private companies in Ghana’s waste management space have been urged to look at the possibility of investing in recycling of used vehicles.
The Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources, Mrs Cecilia Abena Dapaah, made the call when she received a delegation from Wongpanit Pathong Company Limited, a leading Thailand and global waste management company, at her ministry on Friday, February 24, 2023.
The meeting with the minister and the Wongpanit delegation, led by their President, Dr Somthai Wongcharden, was facilitated by the JGC.
According to Mrs Dapaah, recycling used cars will be a new area for Ghana’s waste management sector, adding that it holds prospects for potential investors.
“It will be very interesting for the Jospong Group of Companies and other interested private companies to explore the possibility of investing in the recycling of used cars,” she urged.
She was very delighted that the Thailand waste management giant was into recycling used cars and other car products including used batteries.
“We have a lot of damaged cars sitting in the police stations; a lot of used car tyres gathering mosquitoes, especially during the rainy season, and this is a very interesting area,” she said.
She was also happy that the Jospong Group of Companies was forging a new relationship with a global waste management company in Thailand.
“I must say that you are with the right person and the right company (making reference to Dr Siaw Agyepong and his Jospong Group of Companies),” she told the delegation.
She praised the Jospong Group of Companies for its growth in the recycling space of waste management.
“But I am sure you [Wongpanit Pathong] are older and bigger as a company so the mutual working together will be highly profitable,” she optimistically stated.
Mrs Dapaah, therefore, appealed to both foreign and local investors to come and invest in Ghana’s waste management space, underscoring that Ghana produces about 7 million tons of waste a year of which about 64% is organic.
She intimated that the collaboration between the government and the private sector was yielding “huge results.”
“…and I must say that we are on the right path,” she admitted.
One of such major collaborations, she said, was the construction of recycle plants in all the 16 regions of the country.
“And as I speak, we have 2 of 3 liquid waste management companies that are also ready. One has been commissioned and we have 2 more coming up,” Mrs Dapaah said.
These waste management facilities, she said, were made possible through the government’s collaboration with the JGC.
Mrs Dapaah re-affirmed the government’s policy of collaborating with the private sector to spur the country’s growth, insisting that “without the private sector we will not succeed.”
Earlier, briefing the minister on Wongpanit’s operations, the President of the Thai waste management company, Dr Somthai Wongcharden, said his company focuses mainly on recyclable materials, but added that “right now we are also developing through non-recyclable waste from the municipal solid waste, so we also work on landfills.”
“We collect waste from various households and then transfer them to our recycle facilities,” he said.
He pointed out that a key success factor of the company was first to think of the needs of the market, then “we tailor our products and services to meet the demands of the market.”
Dr Wongcharden, who spoke through an interpreter, noted further that they were into urban mining of waste, indicating that the company mines waste from the cities.
“We work as a private company but we have also connections with the government of Thailand,” he admitted.
Furthermore, the President of Wongpanit Pathong Co., Ltd., disclosed that his company also manages hazardous waste that were recyclable such as car batteries, electronic waste (e-waste) among others.
“We are also into recycling of car batteries, used car recycling. We also work with Mercedes Benz Thailand to destroy damaged cars,” he indicated.
He revealed that Wongpanit Pathong Co., Ltd., has 2,334 branches across Thailand, adding that the company has branches in Cambodia and the United States of America and other parts of the world.
The branches in the United States, he said, were doing very well.
Later in the day, the delegation toured some of the facilities of the JGC within the Greater Accra Region.
These were JA Plant Pool, Sewerage Systems Ghana Ltd., Integrated Recycling and Compost Plant (IRECoP).
The rest were Abgobgloshie Metal Scrub Dealers, Adipa Waste Management Centre and Accra Compost and Recycling Plant (ACARP).
Nigerian businessman, Tony Elumelu, the founder of Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) and chairman of the United Bank for Africa, has called on African entrepreneurs and corporations to invest in businesses that would spur growth and employment on the continent.
Speaking at the Virtual Center for Strategic Philanthropy by the University of Cambridge, the leading businessman noted that Nigeria and the African continent’s population is vastly youthful, and there is an urgent call to invest in key sectors and infrastructure that would boost growth.
According to Elumelu, his Africa-focused non-profit organization, TEF is collaborating with international organizations to expand its reach and impact across the continent. It is sector-agnostic and accepts applicants from fashion, education, agriculture, and technology as long as their ideas can help transform Africa.
He added that TEF is not just about providing funding but training and mentorship to equip young African entrepreneurs with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed. The foundation also supports 1,000 young African women and men every year.
Elumelu explained that the foundation has created more than 400,000 jobs so far, and its founder is urging other African entrepreneurs and corporations to invest in businesses that would have a positive impact on society.
“We need to create a more prosperous society and create jobs,” he said. The world is now realizing that what happens in country A can affect countries B and C and this we can also see in the youth immigration from the continent.”
Elumelu, who launched TEF in 2015 with a seed of $100 million to empower 10,000 African entrepreneurs over the next 10 years, has now empowered over 18,000 young entrepreneurs across 54 countries in Africa by training, mentoring, and funding them with start-up capital of $5,000 each.
As TEF continues to expand its reach and influence, its potential to transform the continent’s economic landscape remains limitless. The foundation’s goal is to drive economic growth across the African continent within the next decade, with plans to create at least one million job opportunities and increase business revenues by $10 billion.
This impact goes far beyond simply empowering budding entrepreneurs, as the foundation has already successfully trained over 1.5 million young Africans through its cutting-edge digital training platform.
Child Health Specialist, Professor Janet Neequaye, says while healthcare delivery in Ghana has significantly improved since she moved to the country in the 1970s, the inadequate distribution of healthcare workers across the country continues to be a major problem.
The Former Head of the Child Health Unit at the University of Ghana Medical School and Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital said in the northern regions and rural areas particularly, health centres are understaffed making healthcare delivery a problem.
She noted that this is partly due to the fact that most healthcare workers refuse to go to these areas due to the lack of essential social amenities like schools to train their wards.
Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Personality Profile, she advised that government invest in these under served areas medical staff friendly to attract healthcare workers.
“I think a major problem now with health system in Ghana is that the north and the rural areas are not well served. Medical staff and nurses would rather be in the big centres partly because when they go to the north for example, it’s difficult for their children to go to school because all the infrastructure is not as good as in the towns. So to improve the health delivery system you really need to make it more medical staff friendly in those affected areas,” she said.
She also said while medical training and salaries have significantly improved over the years, the government must make sure that the current economic downturn does not affect the working conditions of medical staff.
She said the failure of government to cushion healthcare workers from the economic situation would result in brain drain.
“Things have improved with regards to medical training and salaries, so we have to be careful now that things are temporarily difficult financially in the country, we have to be careful that public servants salaries and so on doesn’t fall behind again, because if it does, there’s a worldwide demand for medical staff and if things are bad, people will leave. There might be another brain drain,” she said.
The Energy has mounted a strong defence for the sector Minister, Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, following the resignation of CEO of the Ghana Cylinder Manufacturing Company.
The Ministry has observed that Madam Frances Essiam’s attacks on the Minister, Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh are a misdirection of anger.
Madam Frances Essiam speaking on her sack from the Ghana Cylinder Manufacturing company as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) blamed Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh for her woes
She said the Minister had challenges with a state agency that had opted to support the Ghana Cylinder Manufacturing company in its drive to expand but Dr. Mathew Opoku Prempeh had his own plans and therefore will not agree to her agreements reached with a state agency of her choice.
” . . with all our hard work and efforts at the company, there are some who don’t want us to be successful . . . so I’ve decided to resign. I’m a woman of substance, a woman of peace and highly knowledgeable . . . I have resigned so Dr. Mathew Opoku Prempeh, Minister for Energy and Manhyia South MP can now have his way; he can do whatever he wants with Ghana Cylinder Manufacturing Company; he can grind and chew it . . . I have not heard from the President but I am resigning in principle . . . he (Mathew Opoku Prempeh) should bring it on, I am ready for him,” she said.
But the Public Relations Officer of the Ministry has disclosed Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh neither appointed nor fired Madam Frances as she claimed.
He further indicated the rants of Frances Asiam “It’s a clear case of misdirected anger and he will not be dragged into that hullabaloo. I believe Madam Frances can pick up any challenges she has with the termination of her appointment with the appointing authority.”
Arguing that since Dr. Mathew Opoku Prempeh took over as Energy Minister, he has “supported and guided the agency heads to the best of his ability and he will continue to do so, for the good of Mother Ghana”.
It is a sincere wish motivated by aggravation at having to live in a nation that is so broken that not even wealth can protect you from the wahala (problems) of Nigeria and its structural flaws. Thus, those who can do so do so.
Ayeni Adu, 36,had just given away his fridge when he spoke to CNN on Tuesday, four days before the general election. Suitcases, a cooler box, an empty television stand and a white leather couch were all that were left in his living room. A friend was on the way to pick up the sofa that afternoon. His wife was on her last day at work. The couple had six days left in Nigeria before they moved to the United Kingdom.
They are part of the “japa” wave, the Yoruba word for run or flee that has become the shorthand for the exodus out of Nigeria for better pastures overseas. “I am japa-ing, leaving the country because of the opportunities that are available to me abroad. I am going there to have a better life and a better economy for my family,” Adu told CNN.
A staggering 69% of Nigerians would relocate out of the country with their families if given the chance, a 2022 survey by the Africa Polling Institute found. Only 39% were willing to emigrate in 2019 according to the same poll.
Persistent insecurity, a crumbling economy and rampant corruption are the leading issues for the next government, according to a pre-election survey of voters by Lagos-based SBM Intelligence. Coupled with the high cost of living and unemployment, these concerns have made the country unstable and unpredictable for many, even hostile.
As conditions have worsened in the country, more Nigerians are getting out. Europe and North America are the top destinations for resettlement. The number of “Worker” visas in the UK issued to Nigerians shot up by 399% comparing 2019 to the year ending September 2022, according to data from the UK Home Office. Nigeria was the 5th largest source of immigrants to Canada in 2021, moving up eight places in just five years, Statistics Canada reported.
“This particular wave is hollowing out the upwardly mobile middle class, especially in the mid-20s to late-40s age range,” Cheta Nwanze, lead partner at SBM Intelligence, told CNN. “The very people who are either on the fast track to management or already in the lower cadres of senior management. The very people that the country needs to rebuild.
Adu worked as a radio presenter in Lagos but took a few professional courses and used his health sciences degree to get a job in the UK. Nigeria’s health sector is among the worst hit by the japa phenomenon as doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other professionals emigrate for better working conditions, higher pay and a predictable life. The Nigerian Medical Association says 50 health professionals leave the country every week.
The country appears to be largely training medics for the United States, Canada and the UK. “If nothing is done to reduce the rate at which doctors, medical professionals and other healthcare workers are leaving the shores of this country, it’s just a matter of years,” Dr. Kemi Abiloye, the president of the Lagos Association of Resident Doctors, told CNN before starting her hospital rounds. “I’m not sure whether any doctor will be left in this country.”
An entire cottage industry has sprung up to support those who want to emigrate from Nigeria. Immigration consultants and agencies charge thousands of dollars to offer relocation advice, visa processing services and immigration routes.
On her Instagram page, travel relocation provider Chinwe Iwuanyanwu promises end-to-end application support to destinations like Australia, Finland and Ireland.
“A lot of people don’t trust that things will get better in Nigeria so they’re looking for Plan B,” the Nigerian-born project manager told CNN from her base in Chicago, Illinois. “People want a better life for themselves and their families. We have a lot of talents in Nigeria but they are not getting fully realized, that’s why so many want to relocate.”
Iwuanyanwu says she has aided more than 50 Nigerians in getting hired in Europe and elsewhere. She helps them “optimize” their professional profiles online, revamps their resumés and offers interview prep sessions.
All 18 candidates standing for president in Saturday’s vote are running on a platform of radical change, an acknowledgment that Nigeria is so deeply broken that nothing short of a complete overhaul will work. Japa is now part of everyday language because almost everyone knows someone who is leaving, or has left.
The Afrobeats stars P-Square just finished a comeback tour where they say they encountered Nigerians who have resettled all over the western world. “And when they japa, they see the good life, good roads, good everything,” Peter Okoye, one half of the singing duo, said.
“My family schools in America because of security,” added his twin brother Paul. They support Labour party presidential candidate Peter Obi, who’s inspired the youth in Nigeria but is considered a long shot. He’s in what many believe is a three-horse race with the ruling party All Progressive Congress candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu and six-time contestant Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party.
The next leader of Nigeria can’t do much in the immediate future to reverse the steady stream of talent leaving the country, Nwanze believes. “He needs to focus on restoring confidence, and making sure that people believe that their earnings are not being eroded. Stemming that is one of the very first things the new president would have to focus on. As well as security of course, but all of that would take time,” he told CNN.
There are thousands of TikTok videos, Instagram posts, tweets and Facebook updates of Nigerians celebrating their new lives abroad. They are powerful magnets for those still left at home, considering whether it’s time for the parachute out of “the giant of Africa.”
So, is it “goodbye Nigeria” forever for Adu? “No, it’s goodbye Nigeria until I come back – but it may be a very long time away,” he responds with a laugh.
Several news portals reported on Thursday, February 23, 2023, that Wode Maya, Ghana’s most influential YouTuber account worth over one million subscribers has been hacked.
A google search on his over one million subscribers channel reveals that it has been taken over by a hacker called “Microstrategy.”
All videos have been deleted from the channel, leaving it blank. See the screenshot below;
Consequently, the channel has been completely empty since all of the videos were removed
When it happens like this, trust Realest Blogger of GHBase.Com fame to dig deeper to unravel every secret.
And from checks, chances are higher that Wode Maya is just calling for public sympathy as the 1 million YouTube account has not been hacked in reality.
In a twist to the development, Wode Maya has temporarily sold his active YouTube account to “Microstrategy”, the purported hacker.
In this case, Microstrategy, a well-known bitcoin company, is using Wode Maya’s YouTube account to host their one-week program which has made them hide all the videos in Wode Maya’s account.
Therefore, Wode Maya will get his account back in a week’s time with all his videos intact. So, the truth is that Wode Maya temporarily sold his YouTube account to Microstrategy for huge cash.
The son of a fisherman, Christian Atsu never got caught in the trappings of fame.
Humble beginnings meant the Ghana midfielder, who lost his life in the recent earthquakes that devastated Turkey and Syria, tried to use his success to help others in their lives.
His generosity and charitable nature led one former international team-mate to describe Atsu as “one in a million”.
“He helped a lot of people solve their problems, gave cash out to those in need,” John Paintsil told BBC Sport Africa.
“Atsu’s mind was so good that it could come up with different ideas.
“He was jovial and creative, like a movie star,” the former Fulham and West Ham defender added.
“We have lost a great soul. He was one in a million because he sometimes put others before himself.”
The ‘Ghana Messi’
Perhaps the highlight of Atsu’s international career came at the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in Equatorial Guinea where he scored two goals en route to the final which was won by Ivory Coast on penalties.
Nonetheless, the left-footed midfielder picked up two awards of his own for best goal and best player at the tournament.
“He was a joy to be with and a great team-mate, someone who had an abundance of skill and quality,” said Kwesi Appiah, who played alongside Atsu at that 2015 Afcon.
“He was nicknamed Ghana’s Messi for his style and also the way we relied on him as a team,” revealed the former Crystal Palace striker.
“He was an exceptional player and I’m really honoured to have shared some special moments with him on the pitch.”
In total, Atsu represented his country 62 times, scoring 10 goals.
“Away from football, he was very caring and supportive and would go out of his way to help anyone,” Appiah continued.
“He’d light up any room.”
From fishing in Ghana to finding the net in Europe
Atsu was born in January 1992 in Ada Foah, a town on the south-east coast of Ghana where the Volta River joins the Atlantic Ocean to create the delta that allowed his late father to eke out a living fishing and farming.
Growing up, he shared a cramped bedroom with his mother, twin sister Christiana and four other siblings.
Like other African kids, football was the dream ticket out of poverty.
Atsu cut his teeth at local clubs Cheetah FC and Feyenoord Fetteh – the African academy of Dutch side Feyenoord – before a move to Portuguese giants FC Porto in 2009.
Atsu was just 17 when he arrived in Portugal, initially struggling to break into the first team.
But a successful loan spell at Rio Ave saw him finally make the breakthrough at his parent club during the 2012/13 campaign.
25 appearances in all competitions for Porto, as well as playing every match as Ghana finished fourth at the Afcon in South Africa, convinced Chelsea to snap him up in September 2013.
But the move to London, for a reported fee of £3.5 million, did not work out as planned because Atsu never played a senior game for the Blues.
Instead, he became part of Chelsea’s loan army, with temporary spells in the Netherlands, England and Spain at Vitesse Arnhem, Everton, Bournemouth and Malaga.
But his stop-start club career did not impact Atsu’s performances on the international stage; it was during this time that he shone so brightly for the Black Stars at the 2015 Afcon.
During another loan, Atsu helped Newcastle United win promotion back to the Premier League, scoring in the game which clinched an immediate return to the English top flight.
The move was made permanent soon after.
Christian Atsu played over 100 games for Newcastle United and had a key role in the club’s promotion back to the English Premier League in the 2016/17 season under Rafa Benitez, a coach who thought highly of the midfielder
“He was someone who was very gentle, quite softly spoken,” said BBC Radio Newcastle commentator Matthew Raisbeck, who remembers Atsu from that successful promotion campaign.
“(He) was often singled out by Rafa Benitez and Steve Bruce [both former Newcastle managers] for his hard work in training and a really high level of physical fitness.”
After five years at St James’ Park, Atsu suffered an injury-blighted season in Saudi Arabia with Al-Raed before joining Turkish Super Lig side Hatayspor in September last year.
In a poignant twist of fate, he scored a winning goal in the 97th minute of Hatayspor’s match against Kasimpasa just hours before the first earthquake struck to claim his life.
He was 31 years old.
‘A truly unique and wonderful man’
But perhaps Atsu’s biggest success came off the pitch, where he led a life that was very much the opposite of the bling stereotype associated with modern day footballers.
He returned to Cheetah FC, where he learned his trade, donating boots and other items to the Ghanaian second-tier side’s academy.
He also focused on rehabilitating criminals, people who were desperate for food and ended up convicted of petty crimes.
Atsu believed that prison should not damage people and he was responsible for reuniting several impoverished families in Ghana after paying out thousands of dollars in fines and bail money.
In one example, he helped free a 62-year-old grandmother and her daughter, jailed for stealing two dollar’s worth of corn to feed their family.
He gave some of the prisoners money to get them started in business and also upgraded the football pitch in Awutu Prison.
But Atsu’s philanthropy was not limited solely to helping those in trouble with the law.
“He was such a giver, such a super human being,” Ellie Milner, chairperson of Arms Around the Child, told the BBC when asked about the midfielder’s work with vulnerable children.
“When he visited the children, he would arrive and kick off his shoes and play barefoot.
“They would welcome him like a hero, but also like a father, uncle or brother.”
Atus had been an ambassador for the charity since 2016 and was the main benefactor of a Ghanaian school supporting abandoned children, orphans, the chronically ill and those rescued from trafficking.
“He was a truly unique and wonderful man,” added Milner.
“One of the kindest, most talented, humble people to enter this world.”
“His legacy will live on through the many hundreds, if not thousands of lives he has helped.”
One of the oldest cities in the Middle East is located in the centre of occupied Nablus. The occupied West Bank city is known as “Little Damascus” because of its architecture, arches, and even the local accent and cuisine, which are reminiscent of those of the Syrian capital. There are two churches, 12 mosques, and a Samaritan synagogue scattered around densely populated residential areas.
The Old City of the Ottoman era is filled with friendly faces and brightly coloured clothing on a typical day, along with the aroma of spices and locally made soap from Nablus.
A massive Israeli military incursion on Wednesday targeting three suspected militants changed all that. A CNN team visited the city a day after that raid, to find residents looking into the eyes of every stranger, not welcoming, but concerned about the reason for their visit.
The market was on strike, mourning the 11 Palestinians killed the day before. Rather than selling their wares, business owners were collecting spent bullets from the alleys, with bullet holes and blood stains testifying to the violence the day before.
“We heard explosions and went to hide under the beds. We covered our ears with blankets,” said an old woman with trembling hands and a shaking voice, who was afraid to be identified. “I can’t even describe how shocking it was. We saw death with our own eyes. We didn’t expect to get out of this alive.”
Residents of the Old City have faced many night-time military invasions over the last year, especially since the new Lion’s Den militant group started operating there.
But this week’s invasion came at a very unexpected time of the day.
“They came around 10 a.m. We consider that rush hour in a densely populated area,” said Ahmad Jibril, head of the Emergency and Ambulance Department of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Nablus. The dead included a 72-year-old market trader who, Jibril alleged, “was shot with 10 live bullets all over his body although he wasn’t causing any threat.”
Paramedic Amid Ahmad, who was working to rescue the injured, said this is the first time since the height of the last intifada in 2000 that he has seen the Israeli army using weapons the way they did this week.
“They were shooting randomly everywhere,” he said. “There was an extremely huge number of injuries. Everything was so difficult – reaching the injured, evacuating the injured, everything was difficult because the area is very narrow and was all blocked by the army that prevented us from working.”
Israel Defense Forces international spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht denied that Israeli troops were firing “randomly,” saying: “The IDF only shoots at threats.”
Another IDF spokesman, Maj. Nir Dinar, told CNN he hoped it was not true that IDF forces had blocked medics from reaching the wounded, and said he was “not familiar with such behavior.”
Nablus residents say undercover Israeli military operatives were involved in the raid, one reason they were so distrustful of strangers the following day.
Sahar Zalloum was coming home from bringing her husband’s breakfast to his shop in the market, she said, when she was shocked to see a man she believes was an undercover operative at the door of her house: “I heard some noises in the yard. I saw a man wearing a sheikh’s clothes sitting with a gun. He asked me to get into the house. I ran home – it was terrifying, we didn’t dare to look out from any window, snipers were on all of the rooftops.”
Zalloum and her husband survived uninjured. But many were not so lucky.
Social media video appears to show at least two Israeli army vehicles near the entrance of a mosque, amid gunfire as a group of Palestinians come out of the mosque.
CNN asked the IDF about the video, but received only a generic statement in response, saying in part: “The circumstances of the event in the video are under examination.”
The wounded were transferred to Al Najah Hospital in the city, where Elias Al-Ashqar is a nurse. A video captured him in the emergency room, screaming “My father, my father” the moment he realized one of the dead was his father Abdul-Hadi Al-Ashqar, 61.
“I didn’t believe it, then I came closer,” he told CNN the next day. “I had one of my colleagues with me. I asked him if he sees this dead man as my father. I looked around, waiting for anyone to say that I was mistaken. But it was my father.”
Since the beginning of the year, 62 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health – the highest number at this point in a year since the year 2000. Israel argues that many of the dead are militants, or people attacking Israeli civilians or clashing with Israeli military forces.
But some of them – like Elias Al-Ashqar’s father Abdul-Hadi – appear simply to have been innocent bystanders.
A group calling itself the ‘Bole-Bamboi Youth for JM 2024’, have donated an amount of GH¢20,000 to former President John Mahama to support his 2024 presidential bid.
According to the group, the gesture is an expression of their unwavering belief in Mahama to transform the country’s economic fortunes.
In a presentation at Mahama’s office at Cantonments in Accra on Thursday, the group handed the sum to the former Chief of Staff, Mr Julius Debrah, who received it on behalf of the ex-president.
Mr Debrah thanked the donors for the gesture and reiterated Mahama’s commitment to salvaging the economy when given the nod in 2024.
Speaking to MyJoyonline.com after the donation, leader of the group, Mr Abdul Rafiu Haruna, said the group’s support for Mahama is connected to his ethnic relations to Bole-Bamboi, hence a gesture to one of their kinsmen.
“John Dramani Mahama has been tried and tested. We all lived in this country when he was the president of this country and were witnesses [and] can attest to the good works he embarked on when he was given the privilege to rule this country”, leader of the group added.
He further stated that, “the peculiarities of this election, the 2024 elections are such that we’re presented with candidates that we can measure their track records and we all agree that John Dramani Mahama, has even earned the title the ‘nation builder’ because of the massive developmental projects he has engaged in.
“So I believe that we all can attest to what he has done for Ghana”.
The donation by the group adds to a groundswell of support Mr Mahama has received since expressing his desire to contest the 2024 presidential elections.
Incumbent Members of Parliament, as well as aspiring MPs and other key members of the party have thrown their weight behind the former president’s candidature.
The NDC’s 2020 campaign manger, Professor Joshua Alabi is one of those who believe that Mahama is the best option amongst the party’s other flagbearer aspirants.
Meanwhile, the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) says it is prepared to face former President John Dramani Mahama at the 2024 polls.
Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, the NPP’s Director of Communication, Richard Ahiagbah, said his outfit is not intimidated by Mahama’s intentions.
According to him, Mr Mahama did not give a good account of himself while in office, but rather subjected Ghanaians to untold hardship; including the one-time power fluctuations, termed ‘dumsor’.
A few days after the nomination form was picked for former President John Mahama to lead the largest opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), into the 2024 presidential election, a staunch member of the party, Ambassador Kwesi Ahwoi has suggested that Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang deserves to be retained as running mate.
In an exclusive interview with Starr News Eastern Regional Correspondent, Kojo Ansah at the sidelines of an event at Koforidua Technical University on Friday, Kwesi Ahwoi said even though former President Mahama has the prerogative right to appoint any running mate of choice, nothing stops him from re-appointing his 2020 running mate to partner him again into 2024.
“I have made a lot of statements. I have made a statement that I will do everything to make sure President John Mahama comes back to be President of this country and of course, he has to decide who will be his running mate. I don’t see anything wrong at all and nothing that stops Prof. Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang from being the running mate”. Ambassador Kwesi Ahwoi stated.
The former Interior Minister and current Chairman of Former Ambassadors and High Commissioners under the NDC, dismissed old-age arguments against Prof.Jaane Naana Opoku Agyemang. He said Prof.Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang, can rise to become the next President after John Mahama.
“People are talking about age and all. Age is not a concern. Age is being made a concern because we have a leadership today that is making age look like we have lost track. But if I tell you my age standing here you will be amazed but I have not lost track. So Naana whether she is 78, 79, or 80 can still be President of this country when President John Mahama finishes his service, that should not be a worry at all. Senior Kwabena Duffuor is putting in his cap. Kwabena Duffuor should be getting close to 79, what does he get to do with that, he got his brains, he got everything that he can use to lead this country.so I don’t see anything wrong with that(old age), Is it because Naana is a woman?” he quizzed.
Ambassador Kwesi Ahwoi said it is about time women are given opportunity to rule the country given the fact that men have been tried enough.
“It is about time we put a woman in charge of this country . They have a lot to offer this country. We have tried men, we’ve seen where men have taken us. Let’s try the women”.
Answering a question about whether or not Prof. Jaane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, will attract more votes for the NDC when made running mate to seal the party’s victory, Kwasi Ahwoi said Central region is an amorphous region therefore the seemingly poor performance of the party in 2020 should not be a litmus test for her re-appointment as running mate.
“It is the party that brings numbers it is not really the individual….if the party is strong the candidate is only a reflection of the party. But specifically, she also has her constituency, she can pull resources, and she can pull people. Most people are not calculating things well they think we lost in the central region. We lost the presidential election in Centralia Region because people forget that the central region is an amorphous region. It is not only Fantes. Central region is a combination of Ashantes, Akyems, Denkyiras just name it so don’t look at Fante and say because Naana is a Fante he should bring Central region, no! We have to go beyond that”.
Prof Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, an academician, the first female Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, and a former Education Minister was the running mate for the 2020 Presidential candidate of NDC John Dramani Mahama.
However, lost the election to incumbent President Nana Akufo-Addo of the ruling New Patriotic Party who polled 6,730,587 represented 51.30% as against 6,213,182 vote representing 47.36% polled by John Dramani Mahama of the NDC.
Songstress Sista Afia has expressed disappointment over the outcome of her Queen Solomon Concert held at the Aliu Mahama Sports Stadium in Tamale, citing a lack of participation by Northern Region artists and the deliberate obstruction by certain individuals.
According to Sista Afia, the absence of Northern Region’s top stars, such as Fancy Gadam, on the bill, led to the sabotage of her show.
She alleged that electric plugs were repeatedly disconnected from their sockets during the concert, causing blackouts on stage even before she performed.
“The whole show was sabotaged because I didn’t have Fancy or one other artiste on the bill. So they kept removing the plugs. When I stepped on stage, after 2 seconds, they took the plug, and all the lights went back off. They kept doing it even before I went on stage,” she said.
She also stated that all necessary procedures were followed to ensure a successful concert, but the expected outcomes were not achieved.
Sista Afia also disclosed that she had contacted Macassio and Fancy Gadam for their involvement, but they failed to show up.
“We did everything possible. I mean, we did the prom, and we met the Chiefs. We did everything you are supposed to do when it comes to Tamale.
“We contacted Fancy. I contacted both of them. Then he (Fancy) gave me an amount that I have to pay, and we bargained. And the minute I was about to pay, he wasn’t answering my text,” she added.
The concert, which featured several renowned musicians such as Medikal, Kwame Yogot, Mr Drew, Sefa, Lasmid, Ataaka, Wiz Child, Fadlan, LilWin, and others, was intended to promote and celebrate the talents of artists in the Northern Region.
Sista Afia concluded by expressing her disappointment and called for more support and cooperation from Northern Region artists and stakeholders to promote the growth of the music industry in the region.
In a message commemorating the conflict’s first full year, Britain’s King Charles praised the people of Ukraine for their “really incredible fortitude and resilience in the face of such human sorrow.”
The monarch stated in a statement on Friday that “the people of Ukraine have now suffered unimaginably from an unjustified full-scale attack on their nation.”
“In the face of such a disaster affecting people, they have displayed genuinely tremendous fortitude and resiliency. The unnecessary pain inflicted upon Ukrainians, many of whom I have had the privilege of meeting here in the UK and, in fact, all over the world, from Romania to Canada, has been witnessed by the entire world in horror.
The King added that it was “heartening” to see the UK and its allies “doing everything possible to help at this most difficult time.”
King Charles reaffirmed his support to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he met at Buckingham Palace earlier this month, and expressed his “personal support” for the people of Ukraine.
When Zelensky was in London in early February, he praised Britain for its steadfast support of his homeland in the year since Russia’s unprovoked invasion. Standing in the historic surroundings of Westminster Hall – the oldest part of the Palace of Westminster, where the late Queen Elizabeth II lay in state a few months before – he namechecked former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, an early and steadfast supporter, and commended UK lawmakers for their “strong British character.”
Earlier this week, King Charles visited an undisclosed location in southwest England where Ukrainian military recruits are being trained.
King Charles watched as the troops – many of them civilians with little to no military experience – were taught basic combat training as part of a five-week course delivered by the UK and international partner forces.
He viewed defensive training exercises, including a scenario where recruits stormed a trench amid a gun battle. Scenes reminiscent of World War I trench warfare have been commonplace in Ukraine over the past year.
The course, which has been in operation since last summer, is designed to provide recruits with hostile-environment training. Over 35 days, they learn basic fieldcraft, medical care, marksmanship, weapon handling, and awareness of the laws of armed conflict, among other subject areas.
“You are amazing, I don’t know how you do it. I am full of admiration,” the King said to a senior Ukrainian officer shortly after his arrival, UK news agency PA Media reported.
The British Army’s Chief of General Staff, Gen. Patrick Sanders, accompanied the King during his visit and outlined the training being delivered. He later described the monarch’s visit as “an honour” before adding that the international training effort had so far made 10,000 troops combat-ready.
A 32-year-old Ukrainian high school teacher, who volunteered to fight in the war, told PA: “We’ve been mostly digging trenches for now, how to defend a trench and counter attack and take it back.
“One of my favorite parts was the urban terrain which will be particularly useful for fighting in the Donbas (region of Ukraine). The hard fight there is mostly urban and we look forward to putting these skills to use and pushing the enemy back,” he added.
As well as meeting many of the Ukrainian recruits and their interpreters, the King also spoke with some of the military personnel providing the training – including instructors from New Zealand, Australian and Canadian forces.
One of them said the royal visit had boosted morale. “To hear that The King was coming to visit was very exciting, not only for the Ukrainian recruits but also for those of us who are training them,” said Capt. Freddie Bradshaw, Company Second in Command, 1st Battalion Irish Guards. “It means a lot to us all to know that he is keen to understand what is taking place here.”
The new monarch has enlisted famed British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber to write the flagship anthem for his upcoming May 6 coronation. The King has personally selected the musical program for the service, which will see “a range of musical styles and performers blend tradition, heritage and ceremony with new musical voices of today,” according to Buckingham Palace. Twelve new pieces have been prepared for the occasion. Lloyd Webber, whose hit musicals “Cats” and “Phantom of the Opera” have been performed around the world, said he was “incredibly honoured” to be involved. Lloyd Webber isn’t the only familiar name the King turned to. Find out more here.
Top UK defense minister criticizes Prince Harry.
The UK’s Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace, has said he disagrees with the Duke of Sussex’s decision to reveal how many Taliban fighters he killed while serving in the British Army in Afghanistan, adding that “boasting about tallies” lets down others in the armed forces. Prince Harry faced criticism last month from some British security and military figures, as well as the Taliban itself, after he revealed in his autobiography, “Spare,” that he had killed 25 of the insurgent group’s fighters. “So, my number: Twenty-five. It wasn’t a number that gave me any satisfaction. But neither was it a number that made me feel ashamed,” Harry wrote. Wallace, a former soldier himself, told British radio station LBC Thursday that “every veteran makes their own choices about what they want to talk about,” but “the armed forces is not about a tally.” Read more here.
Catherine, Princess of Wales put a thrifty spin on regal elegance at the 2023 BAFTAs on Sunday night, pairing an upcycled Alexander McQueen gown with $28 earrings from fashion retailer Zara. Arriving at the British film industry’s equivalent to the Oscars with her husband, Prince William, the princess turned heads on the red carpet outside London’s Royal Festival Hall in a dress she previously wore to 2019’s awards. But she transformed the look with an altered shoulder design and a pair of opera gloves. Read the full story.
Speaking of the BAFTAs, the Waleses appeared visibly moved when veteran screen star Helen Mirren took center stage to lead a tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II on Sunday night. Take a look:
Watch Helen Mirren pay tribute to late Queen Elizabeth at the BAFTAs
02:46 – Source: CNN
A childhood letter written by King Charles to his “granny” has been discovered by a couple living in Warwickshire, England, as they cleared out their attic during the Christmas break.
“Dear Granny, I am sorry that you are ill. I hope you will be better soon,” the letter reads on one side, carefully written on lined Buckingham Palace notepaper and dated March 15, 1955, when the King was 6 years old.
It was discovered inside an envelope addressed from Queen Elizabeth II to the Queen Mother, providing a “three generation run,” Charles Hanson, owner of Hansons Auctioneers and who is responsible for the sale of the letter, told CNN.
Read more on this story.
Norwegian King’s first ever motorbike restored for 86th birthday.
Norway’s King Harald turned 86 on Tuesday and as a gift from all employees at the Royal Court, the monarch received a “repaired and restored” motorbike that was first given to him 70 years ago. In a press release to mark the King’s birthday, the Royal Court said the King had received a “Husqvarna light motorcycle, model 30 Sport, for his 16th birthday in 1953,” which was “a gift from his father, then Crown Prince Olav.” The Royal Court said the King used the bike until he received his full driver’s license in 1955, when it was sold. During a visit to an exhibition of royal vehicles last year, the King had “asked if anyone knew where his first motorcycle was kept today.” The refurbished bike was presented to the King with its original license plate number in the Royal Palace in Oslo. (With contributions from CNN’s James Frater)
Disgraced art dealer’s family returns rare royal jewels to Cambodia.
While most monarchies’ crown jewels are heavily protected or given pride of place in a museum, dozens of Cambodia’s were, until recently, stashed away in four boxes near London. The pieces have now been safely returned to their home. The crown jewels were among 77 pieces of centuries-old gold jewelry handed over by the family of the late Douglas Latchford, a British antiquities dealer and leading scholar of Khmer art who in 2019 was accused by US authorities of trafficking artifacts looted from Cambodia. Get the full story on the return of the royal jewels.
“I can only hope the outpouring of solidarity from across the globe may bring not only practical aid, but also strength from the knowledge that, together, we stand united.”King Charles III in a message marking one year of conflict in Ukraine.
For over a decade, stolen images of a former adult star have been used to scam victims out of thousands of dollars. How does it feel to be the unwitting face of so many romance scams?
This article contains spoilers.
Almost every day, Vanessa gets messages from men who believe they are in a relationship with her – some even think she’s their wife. They are angry, confused and some want their money back – which they say they sent her to pay for daily expenses, hospital bills, or to help relatives.
But it is all a lie. Vanessa doesn’t know these men. Instead, her pictures and videos – lifted from her past life in adult entertainment – have been used as the bait in online romance scams dating back to the mid-2000s. Victims had money extorted through fake online profiles using Vanessa’s name or likeness, in a type of romance scam called catfishing.
The flood of messages containing tales of lost money and ruined lives have taken their toll.
“I started becoming depressed, and blaming myself – maybe if my pictures weren’t out there, these men wouldn’t be getting scammed,” Vanessa says – we’re not using her surname to protect her full identity.
For about eight years, Vanessa worked as a “camgirl” – streaming explicit material live on the internet via webcam. Because she was a bit shy when she started out, she decided to create an alter ego called Janessa Brazil. “It’s not really me, it’s Janessa, so I won’t be ashamed,” she thought.
She picked the surname Brazil not only because it’s where she was born, but also because it’s one of the most popular search terms on the internet. It was a savvy decision. “I hate that name,” she says now. “But it helped me get popular quickly.”
For a while, things were great. Vanessa enjoyed the relationship with her fans, who would pay up to $20 (£17) per minute to watch and interact with her. “I want to please them. I want to have fun with them. And they get hooked,” she says.
At the peak of her career, she says she was earning about a million US dollars a year. Janessa had her own website, a successful brand and a vibrant online presence. But in 2016 her online profile went dark.
It took us nine months to find her for the podcast Love, Janessa. When we finally spoke to Vanessa in her modest apartment on the US east coast, she told us that part of the reason she quit making online content was to try to stop the scammers. “I no longer want to give them the power to use anything of mine ever again,” she says.
Vanessa first became aware scammers were pretending to be her when a man posted in the chat during a live show, adamant that he was her husband and she had promised him that she’d stop camming. She thought it was a prank, but asked him to email her.
More victims came forward with similar stories, posting comments during her shows, and asking her to prove her identity. Scammers also popped up with weird requests for her – like putting on a red hat – images they then used to trick victims.
The constant comments, emails and tense atmosphere began to affect her business. “It was a nightmare,” says Vanessa. “But I felt bad for these guys. What am I supposed to do?”
At first she tried to respond to every email, which took hours each day. She says her then husband, who was also her manager, also started monitoring the messages. He told scam victims that he and Vanessa were not liable for the money the men had lost.
“If I got all the money that these guys sent all these scammers, I would be a billionaire today, not sitting here in my little apartment,” she says.
Vanessa thinks it’s in many men’s nature to want to take care of women, which explains why they send money to someone they haven’t met.
“Even if they don’t have the money, they’re still willing to give it, just to feel loved,” she says.
Roberto Marini, an Italian in his early 30s, was hooked by a fake Janessa. It began with a message on Facebook from a striking young woman calling herself Hannah, who complimented him on his start-up business – a sustainable farm on the island of Sardinia.
After three months of exchanging pictures and loving messages, she began to ask for money. It was for little things at first, like a broken phone, but soon she needed more. She told him she had a tough life – when she wasn’t looking after sick relatives she had to make a living in adult entertainment.
Roberto wanted to save her, feeling a “father-ish energy” towards her. But he was frustrated that they could never seem to speak in person – every time they arranged a call, her phone would break or something else would come up.
Then he discovered thousands of pictures and videos of Hannah online – except they were of adult entertainment star Janessa Brazil – and many were more explicit than the ones Hannah had ever sent him.
Their love felt real, so he wondered whether she did not want to reveal her true identity in case it complicated their relationship.
Confused, Roberto joined one of Janessa Brazil’s live online shows. “Is it really you?” he typed into the chat. He didn’t get the answers he wanted, and he was paying by the minute so didn’t stay long.
In his quest to find out the truth, Roberto also emailed her, along with many other people he thought might be the real Janessa. During our interview with her, Vanessa looked back at her inbox and found a message from him amongst thousands of emails.
“Hi. I have the need to talk with the real Janessa Brazil,” he had written in 2016. She had replied an hour later, “I am the real Janessa Brazil.”
He asked her a few more questions trying to find out if they had spoken before. This email exchange was the first and only contact they’d ever had.
But that was not the end. Roberto remained ensnared by scammers. He says he sent them a total of $250,000 (£207,500) over four years, draining his savings and borrowing money from friends and family, as well as taking out loans.
We found Roberto through his online posts warning others that fake accounts were conning people using Janessa’s stolen images. But, even after everything that had happened to him, part of him still believed he had a deep connection with the real Janessa.
That is the sign of a successful scam, says Dr Aunshul Rege, a criminal justice expert from Philadelphia who has studied online romance scams.
She says messages are often sent by criminal networks working in teams to groom victims, sharing images and information. She has even found an example of the manuals they use – practical how-to guides that also list excuses to avoid a phone call which might expose them.
The scams follow a pattern – love bombing, threats of a break-up and then requests for financial help, supposedly to allow the couple to finally be together. The tactics are so formulaic as to be chillingly familiar to anyone who has been at the receiving end, but they work.
“As human beings we are wired to help each other out. That’s just how we’re built,” Dr Rege says.
Vanessa says she hates these cruel tactics. “They show love and then take it away. The guys get desperate and they’re willing to do anything to get it back,” she says.
Dr Rege thinks it’s likely Roberto’s scam was run by an organised group. She says there are huge networks that operate around the world, with substantial numbers originating from Turkey, China, UAE, UK, Nigeria and Ghana.
One of the places Roberto was asked to send money was Ghana, home to a group of online scammers called the Sakawa Boys. We tracked some of them down in Accra. “Ofa”, a softly-spoken young man, told us that impersonating people online is time-consuming and involves a lot of administration – if only to keep track of the lies. He admitted the work made him “feel bad”, but that he had made over $50,000 (£41,500).
When shown images of Janessa, Ofa said he had not used them himself, but understood why they would be a favourite among scammers. He also said that for a scam to work, he would need a variety of pictures showing the women in everyday situations – like cooking or at the gym.
Vanessa thinks her pictures have been used partly because she shared so many candid moments from her daily life. “I put myself out there completely, so they had a lot to work with,” she says.
But she draws a clear line between her professional alter ego and her real self. “Vanessa has panic attacks. Janessa doesn’t,” she says.
Eventually the unstoppable tide of scam victims grew into “a monster” that traumatised Vanessa.
Having to perform every day on camera began to affect her mental health and her marriage. Exhausted, Vanessa told us she started drinking before her shows. She says she hates watching videos from that time because she can see her own unhappiness.
By 2016, she says she couldn’t take it any longer and decided to quit. She says she packed her car, left her home and husband, and drove off to a new life. Now she is training as a therapist, and writing a memoir – taking back control of her own story.
Vanessa has never gone to the authorities to report scammers using her image. She doesn’t think they would take her complaints seriously. “They’re going to look at me like, ‘You’re a porn star’ and laugh at my face,” she says.
Over the years since, she has become more resilient. She knows scammers may never stop pretending to be her, but she understands why some victims get caught in the trap.
“When it comes to love, we can be so dumb,” she says. “I know, I’ve been there. It’s like, ‘Damn! I’m smarter than this!’ So it happens to all of us.”
The bodies of the Ukrainians were found lying next to each other on the grass, with a crater next to them in the ground. The victims’ arms pointed to the location where they had passed away as they were dragged there by Russian mercenaries.
In what seems to be a scheme to booby-trap the dead, a speaker adds in husky Russian, “Let’s plant a grenade on them.”
Another says of the Ukrainian soldiers who will arrive to retrieve the victims, “There is no need for a grenade, we will just beat them in.” At that point, the mercenaries discover they are out of ammunition.
These events seen and heard on battlefield video, exclusive to CNN, along with access to Wagner recruits fighting in Ukraine, and candid, rare interviews CNN has conducted with a former Wagner commander now seeking asylum in Europe, combine to give an unprecedented look at the state of Russia’s premier mercenary force.
While problems of supply and morale, as well as allegations of war crimes have been well documented among regular Russian troops, the existence of similar crises among Wagner mercenaries, often described as President Vladimir Putin’s off-the-books shock troops, is a dire omen for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Wagner forces have for several years enjoyed global notoriety. But as Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine comes apart at the seams, and the announcement of a “partial mobilization” for much-needed conscripts has prompted more than 200,000 Russian citizens to flee to neighboring countries, the cracks in this supposedly elite force are showing.
Since its creation in 2014, Wagner’s mandate, international footprint and reputation have swelled. Widely considered by analysts to be a Kremlin-approved private military company, its fighters have battled in Ukraine since the Russian invasion in 2014 and in Syria, as well as operating in several African countries, including Sudan, Libya, Mozambique, Mali and the Central African Republic.
With a reputation in Russia as a reliable and valuable force, Wagner private soldiers have bolstered Moscow’s global interests and military resources, already stretched fighting a war in Syria in support of the Assad regime. As CNN has reported, their deployments have often been key to Russian control of lucrative resources, from Sudanese gold to Syrian oil.
Flaunting modern equipment in recruiting videos, with heavy weapons and even helicopters, they resemble US Special Forces.
“I am convinced that if Russia did not use mercenary groups on such a massive scale, there would be no question of the success that the Russian army has achieved so far,” Marat Gabidullin – a former Wagner commander who was once in charge of 95 mercenaries in Syria – told CNN.
In touch with former comrades now fighting in Ukraine, Gabidullin said that Russia’s use of mercenaries has ramped up as the Kremlin’s execution of its war has fallen into disarray. Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov told CNN that Wagner troops were being deployed in the “most difficult and important missions” in Ukraine, playing a key role in Russian victories in Mariupol and Kherson.
The Kremlin did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.
Limited official information about Wagner and long-standing Kremlin denials about its existence and ties to the Russian state have only added to its infamy and allure, while helping the group to cloud analysis of its exact capabilities and activities.
In reality, though, Wagner – like Russia – is struggling in Ukraine, according to the video testimony of the group’s own mercenary fighters.
More than seven months of fighting have thrown a harsh light on failings in Russia’s military performance in Ukraine. Russia’s small gains, especially compared to Putin’s initial ambitious targets in the war, have come at huge cost, decimating frontline units and starving many of manpower, as well as critically important experience.
Battlefield experience is one of two factors ex-Wagner commander Gabidullin – who left the group in 2019 and has since published a memoir of his time working for them – says separates mercenaries from regular Russian troops, the other being money.
“The backbone of these groups was always made up of very experienced people who had passed through several wars anyway,” he told CNN.
After serving as a junior officer with an airborne unit in the dying days of the Soviet Union, Gabidullin returned to military life as a Wagner recruit following Russia’s 2014 invasion of eastern Ukraine. He said many key Wagner personnel may, like him, have previously fought in Ukraine as well as in Syria, gaining valuable combat experience alien to most regular Russian troops.
“They have more weighty, more meaningful experience than the army. The army are young soldiers who were forced to sign a contract, they have no experience,” he said.
It’s what makes such paramilitary forces in Ukraine, of which Wagner is just one, so valuable to Russia.
“The Russian army cannot handle [the war] without mercenaries,” according to Gabidullin, adding that there’s “a very big myth, a very big obfuscation about a strong Russian army.”
Today, at least 5,000 mercenaries tied to the Wagner group are operating with Russian forces in Ukraine, Andrii Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency who has been monitoring Wagner in Ukraine, told CNN. This figure was backed up by a French intelligence source who noted that some Wagner fighters had left the African continent to bolster the group’s efforts in Ukraine.
The Kremlin has increasingly relied on Wagner fighters as assault troops, according to Ukraine’s defense ministry. Hidden from official Russian death counts and available for deniable operations, they’ve borne a burden of casualties that have been politically sensitive for Putin in Russia.
“Wagner has been suffering high losses in Ukraine, especially and unsurprisingly among young and inexperienced fighters,” according to a senior US defense source speaking in September.
A simple equation underlies the employment of Wagner forces, according to Gabidullin: “Russian peace for American dollars.”
The mercenaries can earn up to $5,000 per month.
Wagner fighters have even been offered bonuses – all paid in US dollars – for wiping out Ukrainian tanks or units, according to a senior Ukrainian defense source and based on the intelligence gathered on Wagner since the start of the war by Ukrainian authorities.
According to the UK’s Ministry of Defense, Wagner fighters have also been allocated specific sectors of the front line, operating almost as normal army units, a stark change from their history of distinct, limited missions in Ukraine.
Yusov also said that Wagner is increasingly being used to patch holes in the Russian front line. This was also confirmed by a US senior defense official, who added that Wagner is being used across different front lines unlike Chechen fighters, for instance, who are focused around the Russian offensive aimed at Bakhmut.
That has led to significant logistical challenges, he says, with the need to supply Wagner troops with ammunition, food and support for extended operations, all while Ukraine has upped its attacks on Russia’s logistics.
Bodycam footage purportedly from Wagner fighters in August passed to CNN by the Ukrainian defense ministry shows mercenaries complaining of a lack of body armor and helmets. In another video a fighter complains about orders to attack Ukrainian positions when his unit is out of ammunition.
Wagner’s ranks have also been depleted by battlefield losses. In response, they’ve turned to unusually public recruitment.
Billboards have sprung up in Russia calling for new recruits to Wagner. Adorned with a phone number and picture of camouflage-clad fighters, their slogan – “Orchestra ‘W’ Awaits You” – alludes to Wagner’s past nickname as the “orchestra.”
The wide net cast by the group’s recruiting efforts matches a shift from its past secrecy. Even Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin finally admitted his role as Wagner chief in late September, having spent years trying to distance himself from the mercenary group through repeated denials, and even taking Russian media outlets investigating him to court.
Wagner’s invitations to contact recruiters have also spread via social media and online. One recruiter contacted by CNN offered a monthly salary of “at least 240,000 rubles” (about $4,000) with the length of a “business trip” – code for a deployment – of at least four months. Much of the recruiter’s message listed medical conditions that excluded applicants from joining: from cancer to hepatitis C and substance abuse.
In contrast to its image as a military elite organization, a Wagner recruiter had one startling admission regarding recruits when contacted by a CNN journalist: no military experience necessary.
The message finished with a code word – “Morgan” – that applicants were to give at the gate of the Wagner facility in Krasnodar, Russia.
In September, video surfaced appearing to be Prigozhin recruiting prisoners from Russian jails for Wagner His offer: a promise of clemency for six months’ combat service in Ukraine, propping up Russia’s flailing invasion.
It’s a move that would have been unthinkable months ago for the private military company once considered one of the most professional units in the Kremlin’s arsenal.
“An act of desperation” is how the ex-Wagner commander Gabidullin described the appeal.
Prigozhin’s apparent jailhouse recruitment drive matches broader Russian efforts to mobilize the country’s prison population for combat, offering monthly salaries worth thousands of dollars and death payments of tens of thousands of dollars to recruits’ families.
For both Wagner comrades and their Ukrainian adversaries, that’s worrying.
“[Wagner] are ready to send anyone, just anyone,” Ukrainian Prosecutor Yuriy Belousov, told CNN. “There is no criteria for professionalism anymore.”
Working on Ukrainian investigations into possible Russian war crimes, Belousov fears that this lax recruiting will see the scale of war crimes increase.
Although direct recruitment from prisons is a new step, Gabidullin said that a criminal record hadn’t been an obstacle to employment with Wagner. He himself says he had served three years in prison for murder and told CNN of prominent Wagner commanders who had served around the world with the group after prison sentences.
Wagner’s struggles in Ukraine have set in motion a wider problem: discontent in its ranks. For a group that depends on the appeal of its salaries and work, that’s critical.
From intercepted phone calls, Ukrainian intelligence services in August noted a “general decline in morale and the psychological state” of Wagner troops, Ukrainian defense intelligence spokesman Yusov said. It’s a trend he’s also seen in Russian troops more broadly.
The reduction in Wagner recruitment requirements point to demoralization too, he said, and the number of “truly professional soldiers who are willing to volunteer to fight with Wagner” is also decreasing.
Ex-commander Gabidullin, who says he talks to his old comrades on an almost daily basis, explained that this demoralization was due to their dissatisfaction “with the overall organization of the fighting: [the Russian leadership’s] inability to make competent decisions, to organize battles.”
For one mercenary who contacted Gabidullin for advice, that incompetence was too much. “He called me and said: ‘That’s it, I won’t be there anymore. I’m not taking part in this anymore,’” Gabidullin told CNN.
And as Russia’s prospects of victory in Ukraine – or even claiming a positive outcome – look thin, life as a Russian mercenary doesn’t hold the same appeal it might once have had.
“It may be that the money isn’t worth it anymore,” Ukrainian prosecutor Belousov said.
In one of the many videos streaming out of Ukraine’s frontlines, the grim reality of Wagner’s war is plain to see in footage provided to CNN, which allegedly shows the group’s operations.
In one clip, a fallen Wagner mercenary lies, in death, almost peacefully, his left hand gently gripping the black earth. Around him, the battlefield smolders alongside dead bodies and the flaming wreckage of their armored vehicles. Occasional shots crackle through the smoke.
“I’m sorry, bro, I’m sorry,” the soldier’s comrade says, lightly patting his back, stripped of his shirt by the battle that killed him. “Let’s get out of here, if they shoot us, we’ll lie next to him.”
New Patriotic Party (NPP) Presidential hopeful, Kwabena Agyei Agyepong has condemned the culture of monetization that has characterized the party’s internal elections and Ghana’s electoral politics at large.
Paying a surprise visit to the studios of Peace FM during “Kokrokoo” morning show on Friday, February 24, the former General Secretary of the NPP and currently vying for the flagbearer position of the party asked the delegates and electorates to resist the monetary enticements by politicians.
” . . as politicians, we should be distributing inspiration, not money. Our statements and behaviour should motivate people . . . if you are a Minister, you have to be sensitive to the Ghanaian people,” he advised.
He urged the delegates to engage in a lifestyle audit whenever an aspirant offers them money in exchange for votes.
“Sometimes, even the party people should be asking how they are getting those monies,” he said.
Mr. Kwabena Agyei Agyepong also admonished his colleague aspirants to discourage vote-buying stressing “politics is not a job but a calling”, hence seeking to be elected should be an act of service to the people.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky took a combative tone, claiming that he was “confident” his country would win the war, one year after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine believing he would seize Kyiv within days.
At a news conference in the capital city, Zelensky remarked in response to a question from CNN’s Christiane Amanpour: “Success will be inevitable. I have no doubt that the good guys will win.
“Everything is ready for it. We have the drive, confidence, allies, and diplomacy. For this, you’ve all gathered here, Zelensky said. “Victory will be inevitable if we all complete our crucial assignments.”
Russia launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine eight years after forcefully annexing the southern Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.
But its plan to wrest control from Zelensky’s pro-European government has gone badly. A year after Russian tanks rolled into the country, Ukraine is still fighting and has managed to repel Moscow’s advances north of Kyiv and in some eastern and southern parts of the country.
The Ukrainian president has repeatedly rejected the idea of negotiating a peace deal that would see Ukraine lose any of its territory. Speaking on Friday, he said he would not negotiate with Putin – even though he was prepared to speak to him before the war started.
“It is not the same man. There is nobody to talk to there,” he said.
Meanwhile in Russia, former Russian President and Deputy Chair of Russia’s Security Council of the Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday that that Russia’s aim was to “push the borders of threats to our country as far as possible, even if these are the borders of Poland.”
Zelensky used the first anniversary of the war to rally troops and renew calls for international assistance for his country. He handed out awards to soldiers and visited wounded service members before holding the rare press conference.
Earlier on Friday morning, the Ukrainian leader addressed members of the military in Kyiv. He told them it was they who would determine the future of the country.
“It is you who will decide whether we are all going to exist. Whether Ukraine is going to exist. Every day. Every hour. It is you – Ukrainian soldiers – which will decide it,” he said.
Ukraine’s international allies showed their solidarity on Friday, with landmarks around the world lit up in colors of the Ukrainian flag, and new weapons and funding announcements.
The United States announced a $2 billion dollar security package to Ukraine, which includes new funding for contracts including HIMARS rockets, 155-millimeter artillery ammunition, drones, counter-drone equipment, mine-clearing equipment and secure communications equipment.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on the international community not to let Putin’s crimes “become our new normal,” at the United Nations Security Council.
Germany said it would send a further four Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, increasing its original commitment from 14 tanks to 18. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson also pledged to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.
And Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he intends to present the idea of imposing new sanctions against Russia during a virtual meeting with G7 leaders and Zelensky.
But there was a noticeable feeling of anxiety in Kyiv on Friday, as many of its residents worried Russia might launch new attacks on the day of the anniversary.
The public transport system was less busy than usual during the morning rush-hour and many parents decided to keep their children home from school.
Security was heightened, with visibly more troops and police officers out patrolling the streets.
While air-raid sirens are a daily fixture in Kyiv, there hasn’t been a major attack on the city in a few weeks, which means that whenever the alarms are activated, people are left gauging the level of risk.
Across the country, ordinary Ukrainians marked the day in their own ways.
Kathalina Pahitsky, a 16-year old student, went to the St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv to lay flowers in memory of two former students from her school who lost their lives fighting in the war.
It was a bitterly cold morning in Kyiv, but Pahitsky said she felt it was her duty as the student president of her school to represent her classmates and pay her respects to the fallen heroes.
“They were defending our country on the front line. One of them died after he was wounded, the other one stepped on a mine,” she told CNN.
Holding a few red flowers adorned with blue and yellow ribbons, she said those killed in the war must be remembered and celebrated.
“Their photographs are here on the main street. It’s a great honor. They died as heroes. So it’s very important for us. And it would have been for them,” she said.
Olexander Atamas, who was an IT worker before the war and now serves with the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said it was hard to describe his feelings on Friday.
“I would prefer to describe what I don’t feel now, I don’t feel a fear, but [I] feel confidence in my abilities,” he told CNN. “One year ago … I felt fear, I was stressed, psychologically it unsettled me. But currently there is no fear at all.”
Ahead of the presidential and national assembly elections which will be held on Saturday, February 25, 2023, some voters have resorted to sleeping at a polling station in order for them to be able to cast their votes on time.
A video that has emerged on Twitter shows Nigerians lying on mattresses and using mosquito nets at a polling station in an undisclosed area, as they wait eagerly to cast their votes.
The commentary said the eligible citizens arrived at the polling unit before 2 am.
There are about 93.4 million eligible voters for the polls this year, with the highest record of youth involvement in the country’s political history.
Ghanaians on Friday, February 24, 2023 were hit with the news of a sudden resignation of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Cylinder Manufacturing Company Limited, Frances Essiam.
After tendering her resignation, Madam Essiam accused the Energy Minister, Matthew Opoku Prempeh, of impeding her work and sabotaging her.
There were also claims that the Minister was masterminding her removal from office; a decision which triggered her sudden resignation.
However, facts gathered by The Independent Ghana indicate that the above claims are false. The Independent Ghana has intercepted a document that suggests that President Akufo-Addo had appointed a new CEO the very day Madam Essiam is said to have tendered her resignation.
The letter dated February 21, 2023, said: “the President has nominated Madam Genevieve Sackey for appointment as the Managing Director of Ghana Cylinder Manufacturing Company Limited (the “Company”).”
The President further instructed the Energy Minister to “take the necessary steps to regularise the said appointment in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Companies Act, 2019 (Act 992) and the regulations of the Company.”
Thus, the claims of he masterminding her dismissal is unfounded.
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