Mr Rockson K. Dogbegah, President, Institute of Directors-Ghana (IoD-Gh), has requested a strategic partnership between the Ministry of Public Enterprises and the Institute to promote good corporate governance culture in Ghana.
‘‘Sequel to your pledge to support the promotion of good governance outcomes during our Directors Week Celebration, we wish to formalise the relationship between our two great institutions and request your strategic involvement in supporting the Institute to promote good corporate governance in the country,’’ he said.
Mr Dogbegah said this when he paid a courtesy call on Mr Joseph Cudjoe, Minister for Public Enterprises in Accra.
IoD-Gh, registered on 21 May 1999, as a company limited by guarantee and registered under the Professional Bodies Registration Act, 1973 (NRCD 143) on 31st August 2020, is a professional organisation committed to the professional practice of corporate governance.
The initiative to establish the Institute started in June 1998 by the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Commonwealth Association for Corporate Governance and the then State Enterprises Commission of Ghana, now the State Interests and Governance Authority.
Mr Dogbegah said: “We look forward to signing a Memorandum of Understanding with you to formalise our relationship to promote good governance outcomes.”
He said some of IoD-Gh’s ongoing strategic projects included a collaboration with the Bank of Ghana and other key stakeholders towards the launch of the development of the National Corporate governance code to harmonise existing sector codes and provide for sectors, which did not have any in line with best practice.
“The draft code is ready for stakeholder’s review and input. A soft copy is available on our website and a hard copy is also attached to enable us to receive comments from you and all stakeholders within your networks in our jurisdiction,” he stated.
Mr Dogbegah said the Attorney General had approved the Institute’s Director’s Draft bill, which he said was ready to be forwarded by the Minister of Education for onward presentation to the Cabinet for consideration and approval.
“Your voice and support at the Cabinet level for purposes of approval will be greatly appreciated,” the President said.
The Institute, he said, was currently embarking on a massive training for professional directors and aspiring directors to ensure the country had the critical mass needed to champion good corporate governance outcomes in various organisations and institutions.
“We will be grateful if a forum can be arranged for us to provide a membership information talk with your stakeholders during, which session we will discuss all the services of the Institute and provide information on membership requirements,” Mr Dogbegah stated.
The President said loD-Gh instituted an excellence award to build national capacity in corporate governance and to reward stakeholders who had been outstanding in the area of practising good governance.
He invited the Minister to the launch of the second edition of, “The Best Practice Guide: Directors’ Hand Book”, and the excellence awards.
Mr Dogbegah commended the Minister for his continuous support and partnership with the Institute and expressed appreciation for his leadership in promoting the culture of good corporate governance in the country.
Alan Kyerematen, the minister of trade and industry, stated that the country’s new tax stamps policy on textiles aims to increase domestic production and give customers the comfort that they are making authentic purchases.
He claims that the tax policy, which is not anticipated to bring in significant amounts of money, aims to ensure that smuggled African textile prints, which aim to undercut locally manufactured ones on the market, are decreased on the market along with the proper tariffs being paid.
Alan Kyerematen discussed additional policy initiatives aimed at boosting and sustaining the textile sector to support job creation in his speech at the Textiles Tax Stamp Policy’s Accra launch.
“The introduction of a new import regime and restrictions management for textiles is to ensure that entry of pirated designs are restricted. Let me assure you that this measure is not in any way meant to unduly restrain imports,” he said.
“We currently do not have the local manufacturing capacity to meet the total national demand of over 120 million yards per annum out of which 35% is produced locally.”
“The system for acquiring textiles tax stamps has been developed with the help of the Intellectual Property Office to ensure that legitimate textiles are traded on the local market,” Alan Kyerematen explained.
He said that in the coming months, the introduction of designated entry corridors will be adopted to ensure that imported African prints adhere to necessary standards.
“By this, all imported textiles would be required to enter the country through dedicated corridors; Tema and Aflao which have been fitted with affixing facilities and other needed equipment to keep track and ensure that imported African prints adhere to standards,” he said.
The Minister said engagements with local manufacturers will be held as part of efforts to reduce inefficiencies, enhance low cost of production and improve competitive pricing of wax prints.
“Currently, local manufacturers benefit from zero-rate VAT granted in January 2019 which has been extended to December 2023. ”
“To also ensure Ghana can attract foreign textile manufacturers to set up or relocate their plants in Ghana, government will continue to create the necessary environment and engagements to encourage foreign firms including textile manufacturers,” the trade minister said.
Meanwhile, the tax stamps policy is expected to commence on November 1, 2023.
The implementation modalities will include having textiles stamps affixed on all textile prints traded in Ghana.
Subsequently, the operation of the textiles task force will be reviewed to ensure that stakeholder membership on the Task Force is adequately representative.
The task force is expected to undertake monitoring exercises on all markets after the inception of the effective enforcement date which is scheduled for March 1, 2023.
The Textile Tax Stamps Policy is in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance, Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), the Intellectual Property Office and the Ghana Standards Authority which form part of the key implementing agencies.
Contrary to the building regulations, many Ghanaian contractors seldom ever submit their construction materials for testing by the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA).
Testing of building and road construction materials is required by the building code.
Local contractors do not voluntarily do this, according to Genevieve Baah Mante, head of the GSA’s Material Science Department, who revealed this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Tema.
“But on the contrary, the foreign companies mostly visit the GSA for testing for the specification of their building materials, which include water, concrete mixtures, sand, and iron rods, aggregate for road construction, thermoplastic marking paint, among others,” she said.
Madam Mante explained that “the GSA has developed a building code that gives specifications for different products for the construction of buildings, and roads, but we have observed that mostly it is the foreign companies that bring their products there for checking.”
She stated for example that foreign contractors of a lot of the buildings at the airport area, and the motorway interchange construction tested the materials and even the water used for the projects.
She said more awareness must be created among the local contractors while urging the district assemblies to make it a requirement for the issuance of building permits.
Giving the benefit of testing building materials, she indicated that the land that the building would be put on must be tested because if it contained a lot of organic matter the buildings would have problems.
“The water that you use to mix the concrete if it contains a lot of salt and other materials, it will not help you to get the kind of binding property of the concrete that you need to have for a consistent product,” she said.
Madam Mante observed that roads and buildings that could not last for their expected life span could be attributed to the lack of testing of the materials.
She explained that the GSA is legally mandated to undertake national standards development and dissemination, testing services, inspection activities, product certification scheme, calibration, verification, and inspection of weights, measures, and weighing and measuring instruments.
The Authority also undertakes pattern approval of new weighing and measuring instruments, destination inspection of imported high-risk goods, and promoting quality management systems in the industry.
Madam Mante said the Authority also advises the Ministry of Trade and Industry on standards and related issues.
She emphasized that the services rendered by GSA were essential for economic growth, stressing that, “this is because standards bring technological, economic and societal benefits.
“It helps to harmonize technical specifications of products and services making the industry more efficient and breaking down barriers to international trade as conformity to standards helps reassure consumers that products are safe, efficient and good for the environment”.
For business organizations, Madam Mante said standards are strategic tools and guidelines to help companies tackle some of the most demanding challenges of modern business.
“Standards ensure that business operations are as efficient as possible, increase productivity and help companies and institutions to access new markets,” she said.
Mr Kwabena Agyei Agyepong, a flagbearer hopeful of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has called for the scrapping of the four-year ex-gratia payments.
He said the country did not have the needed resources to honour that arrangement.
The former General Secretary of the NPP said there should be arrangements where Members of Parliament for instance could be offered “something little” at the end of their term in office instead of giving them lump sums every four years under the current system.
“Ex-gratia should be like a parachute payment. When you have served your country like a member of Parliament…it’s a difficult assignment. I would say it is like marriage. When you elevate a lady to a certain level as a wife and you want to leave, that’s why they let you pay alimony,” he said in an interview in Accra.
“It cannot be right on any moral standing. We should stop it immediately. We don’t have the money as a country,” Mr Agyepong added.
Ex-gratia payments are regarded as part of the end-of-service benefits for a certain class of public servants — and it is paid every four years.
The category of workers who benefit from ex-gratia payment is Article 71 office holders made up of the President, the Vice President, the Speaker of Parliament, the Chief Justice and other Justices of the Supreme Court of the country.
The rest are Parliamentarians, Ministers of State, political appointees and public servants with salaries charged to the Consolidated Fund, but enjoying special Constitutional privileges.
There have been conflicting arguments about the essence of the payment of ex-gratia to Article 71 Office holders, with some commentators and Governance experts describing the practice as an “unfair arrangement.”
The debate resurrected when it emerged that Togbe Afede, the Agbogbomefia of the Asogli State, returned an amount of GHS350,000 paid to him as ex-gratia for serving as a Member of the Council of State.
Togbe Afede described the amount as “outrageous” saying it was “inappropriate for a short, effectively part-time work.”
Nana Adjei Ampofo, a former member of the Council of State also called for a review of the payment of ex-gratia to members of the Council to meet the economic realities of the day.
Former President John Dramani Mahama recently pledged to implement the recommendations of the Constitutional Review Committee as well as review ex-gratia payments in the next NDC administration.
The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has urged all taxpayers to hook on to the electronic invoicing system for Value Added Tax (E-VAT) to allow monitoring.
The Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority on October 1, 2022, began its certified electronic invoicing system to ensure all invoices that are issued by taxpayers are witnessed by the Commissioner’s system.
The electronic invoicing system will be authenticated with an app and deployment of compliance officers to ensure its enforcement.
There are 50 taxpayers selected across and enrolled on the system. The selected 50 reflect all types of taxpayers registered with the Authority of which some are complying, and others are not.
The Authority will ensure no operations of customers until they hook on to the system.
In a brief meeting with the media on Tuesday, at the Head Office of the Ghana Revenue Authority Accra, Mr Kwesi Eghan, Deputy Commissioner for Operations at the GRA, said the exercise would continue until each taxpayer was fully compliant, 600 additional taxpayers will be enrolled by the end of the first quarter of 2023.
The whole exercise will see its conclusion by 2024 when all taxpayers will be using the Commissioner-General’s invoicing system.
“This closing down of shops is not the path the Authority is forging willingly; it is a last resort action. We will advise that you comply before we start this whole exercise,” he said.
He urged taxpayers to effectively roll out the Commissioner-General’s system to help curb the illegal issuance of own invoices to help generate revenue for the government.
He said the exercise was targeted at the initial selected 50 taxpayers, who are supposed to hook on to the system.
“It is not as if all other taxpayers are not compliant, quite a number are hooked on the system voluntarily as mandated by the Authority,” he added.
He said non-compliant taxpayers would be prevented from operating until hooked on to the system, “if you have six branches and one is closed, you will be prevented from operating from any branch across the country till all six shops are hooked on the system,” he said.
The Authority is embarking on several exercises, including invigilation by officers, electronic invoicing exercises, test-purchase exercises, and enforcement of taxpayers to register with the Authority.
About 400 women-led Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) will benefit from the Women SME Innovation Programme – Digitalize for Jobs (D4J) to fully leverage the potential of digitalisation and to better organise their business information.
The programme will also support the women with efficient record-keeping and financial management practices to facilitate their access to finance, expand their customer base and turnover and develop new products and services.
Mrs Kosi Yankey-Ayeh, the Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA) at the launch of the programme, said SMEs today were critical to the growth, employment, and poverty reduction in the country.
The Programme is supported by the Special Initiative on Training and Job Creation, which operates under the brand ‘Invest for Jobs,’ an initiative of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
Implemented by GEA and supported by “Invest in Jobs”, the project sought to provide capacity-building to women-owned/led SMEs on different aspects of digitalization and how their companies can grow from its use and increase their process efficiency and competitiveness by providing access to knowledge, and digital tools.
It will create a digitalized business environment conducive to the rapid growth of SMEs in Ghana and this will ensure that they are creating jobs after the programme
The SMEs will also be trained to build their online visibility via company-owned websites and social media to reach more clients.
The CEO said the SMEs account for over 50 per cent of private output, nearly 70 per cent of employment, and 90 per cent of businesses in Ghana.
“Consequently, the importance of the SME sector and the role it plays in national development and economic transformation cannot be underestimated,” she added.
She said the Programme was a scale-up measure of the COVID-19 SME Innovation and Digitalisation Support Scheme, which helped 500 SMEs to ensure business continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic, thereby sustaining 6,750 jobs.
Mrs Yankey-Aryeh said SMEs, with a focus on those that were women-owned/led, were faced with challenges that compromised their ability to function effectively and to contribute to the economy.
He said over the years, GEA had encouraged SMEs, especially women-owned to adopt digital methods to augment business growth and competitiveness.
“So far more than 11 million dollars have been utilized to train or support over 10,000 Women Entrepreneurs,” she said.
Mr John Duti, Team Leader of Invest for Jobs at GIZ Ghana, said if SMEs were to remain competitive in the global world, they have no choice but to digitalise.
He said focusing on women-owned and led enterprises represented an opportunity to reduce the digital gender gap, which brings social and economic benefits for the whole country given the significant role of women and their enterprises in Ghana’s socio-economic development.
“Female empowerment is a powerful tool to make everybody’s life richer and successful,” Mr Duti said.
He commended the entire GEA team which ensured the excellent delivery of the first phase and subsequently played a major role in securing the scale-up of our partnership.
He said digitalisation involved a lot of investments in modern software and hardware, as well as capacities in its applications and these costs involved indeed, could not be borne by most of the SMEs.
He expressed optimism that the programme would provide the tools and skills to benefit from digitalisation and harness SMEs’ potential for sustainable growth and job creation in the digital area.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration has pledged its support for the ratification of the African Disability Protocol (ADP)
The ADP is a human rights treaty that addresses forms of discrimination affecting people with disabilities living in African countries, including harmful practices, beliefs and superstitions.
It was adopted in 2018 by the African Union
Mr Kwaku Ampratwum – Sarpong, Deputy Minister for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, expressed the Ministry’s support when the Ghana Blind Union and the committee working towards Ghana’s ratification of the ADP called on him.
He said: “You don’t have to worry, you have our support, it is good for Ghana to ratify the protocol.”
The ADP addresses specific African practices and culture with regards to disability which is not addressed in the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD)
Dr Peter Obeng Asamoa, Executive Director of the Ghana Blind Union, who led the team, said “We need Ghana to ratify the ADP,” explaining that the ADP puts the rights of persons with disabilities in Ghana and Africa in an African perspective.
The African Disability Protocol (ADP) builds on the rights enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and UN charter and has an African relevance.
The Protocol needs 15 African States to ratify it into law, so far five African countries have ratified the protocol.
Dr Obeng-Asamoa called on other African countries to work towards its ratification to promote the dignity and inclusion of persons with disability in Africa.
Eldah Naa Abiana Dickson, popularly known as Abiana, has expressed that she doesn’t get disappointed when Ghanaians don’t dance to her songs during her performances.
Speaking with Abrantepa on E-Forum, she disclosed that Ghanaians don’t appreciate the good artistes they have in the country until they go viral.
“Here in Ghana, they have the culture of not appreciating their own thing. When you go out there, they want to know what’s up with this person. If you look at my album, I have danceable songs. It’s not like I do very slow songs.
“I came up with ‘ Bo Nↄnn Ni’. Bo Nↄnn Ni was up-tempo and I have ‘Star’ which is also up-tempo. I have danceable songs on my album,” she said.
According to the ‘Bolgatanga Girl’ singer, she is aware of this and has no expectations when she performs at shows anywhere in the country.
“Even in Ghana, when I play shows and they don’t dance, I know it’s the usual thing. They don’t appreciate the great thing that is here but they will wait till your name has blown up out there and they will say ‘oh, okay, okay,” she added.
Abiana is expected to host a concert dubbed ‘AbianaLive’ at Zen Gardens on October 15, 2022. The singer mentioned that she was poised for the show and was ready to give her fans a spectacular performance.
Education Minster, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, has noted that the Free Senior High, Technical and Vocational Education will help to unleash the potentials of the youth for development.
According to him, said the two programmes had essentially provided a huge opportunity for every Ghanaian youth to access quality education.
Dr Adutwum said this in Sunyani when he interacted with the members of the Bono Regional House of Chiefs during a working visit to the region.
“The Government is investing hugely in TVET education not only to fetch direct jobs for graduates, but also push rapid industrialisation,” he said.
Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) centres had been put up in many schools in the region to ensure effective implementation.
He cited the SHSs at Jinijini in the Berekum West District and Koase in the Wenchi Municipality as well as the St. James Seminary/SHS at Abesim, near Sunyani as the locations of some of the centres.
“For a country to develop in this modern age, education, particularly STEM, should remain at the forefront and that is exactly what the Government is committed to doing”, the Minister said.
He said the nation’s gross tertiary education enrolment was low, hovering around 25 per cent, and called on all stakeholders to contribute to ensure that more students pursued higher education for the country to have a quality human resource base for development.
Osagyefo Oseadeeyo Dr Agyeman Badu II, the Paramount Chief of Dormaa Traditional Area, and the President of the Bono Regional House of Chiefs, implored the Government to expand infrastructure at the University of Energy and Natural Resources, the Sunyani Technical University, and second cycle institution to facilitate teaching and learning.
He expressed concern over the abandonment of construction works on the Bono Regional Library project and appealed to the Minister to intervene for work to resume.
According to Abiana on E-Forum on GhanaWeb TV hosted by Abrantepa, people gravitated towards her performance in Swaziland more than in Ghana.
“You could perform and people will look at you like ‘Ah, the song we don’t know it ooo, we don’t know it ooo’ but when I went there (Swaziland) it was a different approach.
“It made me understand that I need to spread my tentacles wide and look at touring different African countries.
“From when I started my performance to the end of the performance, I realised that the people were standing on their feet whilst it was not even done here (Ghana),” she disclosed.
She also mentioned that, although she was new in the system before flying to Swaziland, people had already paid to attend her show after researching her.
“I had come fresh in the system and they had used my name for the event, but for people to look me up and say I will pay this amount of money to come and watch this girl from Ghana, then, I said, there is something special about me,” she added.
Abiana also added that because of the lack of support from her Ghanaian counterparts, she has psyched herself to understand that they will support someone only after their songs have made waves.
“I know they will still do it with other people, but there is something special about me. It made me come to the realisation that there is much more for me to do when it comes to performing live,” she added.
Abiana is expected to host a concert dubbed ‘AbianaLive’ at Zen Gardens on October 15, 2022. The singer mentioned that she was poised for the show and was ready to give her fans a spectacular performance.
American Disc Jockey cum music producer, Khaled Mohamed, popularly known as DJ Khaled has joined the list of Hollywood entertainers who have linked up with Nigerian singer, Burna Boy.
‘Oluwa Burna’ has seemingly established a good relationship with most of these American celebrities particularly after he grabbed the ‘Best Global Music Album’ at the Grammys for his ‘Twice as Tall’ album.
Ed-Sheeran, Beyonce, Trevor Noah, Diddy, Drake, and many others have already had their moments with the ‘Gbona Gbona’ hitmaker.
Now it appears to be DJ Khaled’s turn as he has been spotted on social media, feasting on some lobsters and recording a tune with Burna Boy.
Khaled shared interesting videos of their time together on his Instagram page and captioned one of them;
“Ideas flowing.”
DJ Khaledrecently released his latest album, titled ‘God Did,’ which featured tons of American music legends.
Thousands of people in China are taking up “crocodile crawling” classes, a weird type of back relief exercise inspired by the movement of a crocodile.
Multiple news outlets in China have been reporting on a new health trend with dozens of people joining large groups and moving around on all fours. Viral videos shot in large cities like Xiangshan and Changsha show long lines of people all dressed the same and wearing industrial gloves to protect their hands as they slowly move around on their hands and feet. The movement is supposed to strengthen back muscles and relieve back pain if practiced regularly, for a long enough period of time.
Zhu Zhengliang, a new practitioner of crocodile crawling, recently told China’s state-run China Central Television (CCTV) that he took up the new exercise because he had heard that it helped relieve back pain.
The man’s claims were backed up by Li Wei, the head of the “Crocodile Walk” group in Xiangshan, who said that he had struggled with spine problems in the past, but after practicing crocodile crawling for about 8 months, the pain disappeared.
“It looks similar to doing push-ups and moving forward at the same time,” said Chen Xin, an orthopedic surgeon at the Peking University 3rd Hospital in Beijing. “It will reduce the pressure on the intervertebral disc and help improve peripheral strength.”
However, Xin warned that crocodile crawling doesn’t look suitable for people suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure or heart disease, because “the exercise raises blood pressure quickly and puts more pressure on the heart than walking”.
This is only the latest bizarre exercise to come out of China. In the past, we featured neck hanging, which is literally hanging by the neck to treat back pain, and even iron shoe training, walking with 150 kg of iron attached to your feet.
Actress Efia Odo on Tuesday went after the leadership of the country for their failure to make lives any better under their administration.
Boiling with rage over the current state of the economy and the plight of innocent Ghanaians, the popular social media influencer checked herself out of Twitter to prevent sharing honest thoughts that might come out as disrespectful to authorities.
A video of some students of St Paul’s Senior High School and Minor Seminary being fed rice and soup with a little portion of meat triggered her emotion.
“I need to get off Twitter for the day. The economic crises and seeing the food given to SHS students got my blood hot and fingers ready to tweet my thoughts. The way the country is headed is extremely sad,” read her tweet dated October 11.
I need to get of Twitter for the day. The economic crises and seeing the food given to shs students got my blood hot and fingers ready to tweet my thoughts. The way the country is headed is extremely sad.
In a direct tweet to the president, she wrote: “#FixTheCountry @NAkufoAddo you’re incompetent and cold-hearted. God will judge you accordingly.”
Efia Odo, a Fix The Country convenor is known for calling out the New Patriotic Party administration led by Akufo-Addo over mismanagement of public funds, corruption and poor living standards.
Inflation (year-on-year) shot up by 3.3% to 37.2% in the month of September, the Ghana Statistical Service has revealed.
This is against 33.9% recorded in August 2022.
According to the GSS, five groups recorded inflation rates higher than the national average in September.
They were Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other fuels (68.8%); Furnishings, Household Equipment and Routine Household Maintenance (51.1%); Transport (48.6%); Personal Care, Social Protection and Miscellaneous Goods and Services (42.6%) as well as Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages (37.8%).
The implementation of the utility tariff in September 2022 influenced the surge in inflation in Housing, Water, Electricity and other Fuels group.
Prior to the announcement of the September 2022 inflation, the Bank of Ghana adjusted upwards the policy rate to 24.5% to help fight inflation, though some analysts argue the increasing rate of inflation is largely supply driven.
According to the data, Food inflation for the month of September was 37.8%. Non-food Inflation was however 36.8%.
Inflation for locally produced items was 35.8%, but that of imported items was 40.7%.
Focusing on food inflation on a year-on-year basis (37.8%) for September 2022, 10 subclasses recorded higher rates. This was distantly led by Water (58.9%) followed by Milk, Other Dairy Products and Eggs (49.0%) and Sugar Confectionery and Desserts(48.0%).
Eastern region (47.1%) maintained its lead as the region with the highest inflation. It was followed by the Greater Accra (45.3%) and Central regions (41.9%).
The Upper West region recorded the least rate of inflation of (22.9%).
The International Monetary Fundis predicting a gloomy picture for the banking sector in developing countries including Ghana in the coming year if global economic conditions do not improve.
This was captured in the latest Global Financial Stability Report released by the IMF.
The Government of Ghana embarked on a clean-up exercise of the banking space in 2017 with the hope of restoring confidence in the country’s financial sector.
Ghana is already dealing with high policy rates, worsening inflation and depreciation of the cedi.
The Government of Ghana and the Bank of Ghana have already put measures in place, including seeking a bailout from the IMF, to salvage the already distressed economy.
Government had blamed the Russia-Ukraine War and the adverse effects of the COVID pandemic on the worsening economy.
The Bretton Woods institution believes some economies may go into recession if global financial conditions remain the same.
The Global Financial Stability Report shows that financial stability risks have increased since the last report, with the balance of risks tilted to the downside.
The report said, although the global banking sector had withstood pressures till date, its global bank stress test however shows that these buffers may not be enough for some banks going into 2023 as an abrupt and sharp tightening of global financial conditions could send several economies into recession coupled with high inflation thus leading to a breach in capital requirements.
In an interview with Citi Business News, Economist at the University Of Ghana Business School, Dr. Patrick Asuming said key measures must be put in place to help with the profitability of the banks.
“In recent times, especially when this discussion about debt restructuring came up, we all know that if the domestic restructuring is to happen then it’s going to impact our banks and I think for us, it’s a more immediate shock, and it’s more likely to happen than not. In our case, if you put that on top of rising inflation and the general weakening of the global economy, then that puts our local banks at risk. What we can do is to ensure our economic banks look bright and that will help with the profitability of the banks”.
A Spanish law school teacher recently shared one of the ingenious methods that one of her students used to cheat on an exam – a dozen of artistically etched BIC pens.
Yolanda de Lucchi, a teacher at the University of Malaga, in Spain, recently shared a couple of very interesting photos on her Twitter account. She was apparently cleaning up her drawers when she came across one of the more ingenious cheating methods she and her colleagues had confiscated. A few years back, one of her students tried to cheat on an exam by finely etching the Criminal Procedural Law onto eleven BIC pens. A close-up of the pens really showcases the skill of the student, who obviously put a lot of time and effort into his intriguing cheating technique.
“The criminal procedural law in BIC pens. What art!” the Spanish teacher tweeted, adding the hashtag “cheat sheets aren’t like they used to be”. She only shared the photos to show other fellow teachers the ingenuity of her students, but the tweet kind of took a life of its own. It received over 280,000 likes on Twitter alone, as well as tens of thousands of retweets.
Interestingly, one of the people who replied to Yolanda de Lucchi’s viral tweet claimed to know the student who had created and tried to use the BIC pens and even posted another photo of other similar pens the man had allegedly created.
“Hello Yolanda. I know the author of that wonderful work perfectly. In fact, he has authorized me, ignoring his name, logically, to show you some more that he still keeps at home,” the Twitter user wrote. “The technique used by the artist, as he himself tells me, was to replace the graphite lead of a mechanical pencil with a needle, which made it super easy for him to etch the pen.”
Gonzo, the artist’s friend, also posted a photo of the improvised etching tool and added that his buddy would arrange the pens in order, to make them easier and less conspicuous to read during exams.
The artistically-etched cheat sheets drew a lot of attention online, with many praising the “artist” for his patience, and others claiming that it would have been easier to study for the exam than to etch all those pens. De Lucchi herself praised her student, even if she did fail him that year.
“That could not happen today,” the teacher wrote. “Now students would not make an effort to have such a detailed cheat sheet for an exam. They live at the click of a button, by what happens instantly; that is impossible to see today.”
This is just one of the ingenious exam cheating techniques we have featured on Oddity Central over the years. In the past, we’ve seen exam answers painted on nails, Bluetooth devices surgically implanted in ears, and even Bluetooth-connected flip-flops.
Graham Bonham-Carter was arrested on Tuesday accused of funding properties purchased by Oleg Deripaska – one of Russia’s most controversial oligarchs who was sanctioned by the US in 2018.
Mr Bonham-Carter is also accused of unlawfully moving his artwork abroad, the US Department of Justice said.
The US is now seeking Mr Bonham-Carter’s extradition, the DoJ said.
Mr Bonham-Carter, who is based in London and is the second cousin of actress Helena, appeared before Westminster Magistrates’ Court following the extradition request and was released on conditional bail.
Mr Bonham-Carter is believed to be linked to the oligarch through a number of high-value properties in the US and in the UK – all suspected to be ultimately held for Mr Deripaksa’s benefit.
In March, Mr Bonham-Carter had his bank accounts frozen for six months under orders were secured by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) after it was alleged his accounts contained money linked to Mr Deripaska.
Mr Bonham-Carter faces three US charges – conspiring to violate and evade US sanctions in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), one count of violating IEEPA and one count of wire fraud.
Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Mr Bonham-Carter is accused of engaging in more than $1m (£900,000) worth of illicit transactions to fund real estate properties in the US for Mr Deripaska’s benefit.
It is alleged that the businessman was instructed by Mr Deripaska to set up a company, named GBCM Ltd, for managing his properties, including two in New York and one in Washington DC. Mr Deripaska wealth has been estimated to be more than £2bn.
A Japanese woman was somehow fooled into paying 4.4 million yen ($30,000) to help a “Russian astronaut” she had met online return to Earth from the International Space Station.
It’s not often that we feature news stories worthy of an “Idiocracy” sequel, but this is definitely one such rare occasion. To be honest, had it not been reported by two of Japan’s largest news outlets – Mainichi and Kyodo News – we would have dismissed it as a satirical piece by The Onion. But, it turns out that a 65-year-old woman from Japan’s Shiga Prefecture really did fall in love with a man claiming to be a Russian astronaut and sent him $30,000 to help him hitch a ride back to Earth from the International Space Station. Really makes the “Nigerian prince” scam sound believable, doesn’t it?
The unnamed woman reportedly became enamored with the “astronaut” after they met on social media in June of this year. They started texting each other through the Line messaging app, and before long the man declared his love and promised to move to Japan and marry her. There was only one problem: he was aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and he couldn’t afford to come back to Earth…
I know, it’s hard to even begin to understand how someone could pay tens of thousands of dollars to such an obvious scammer, but you know how love is. In her defense, the woman said that the stranded Russian astronaut told her that he needed money to pay for a rocket and its “landing fees”. She trusted him at first, especially since he seemed very familiar with space agency acronyms like NASA or JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and had some photos of the ISS on his Instagram account.
The woman sent her online lover a total of 4.4 million yen ($30,000) on five different occasions but ended up alerting the police about him after he kept asking her for more. They were shocked to hear her story, but the woman obviously believed the childish lies she had been fed. He
Japanese news outlets have yet to report whether the “Russian astronaut” has been apprehended, or if authorities are waiting for him to return to Earth.
Media personality Doreen Avio has paid a visit to the Luom Presbyterian Basic School as part of the International Day of the Girl Child celebrations.
Her visit to the school located in the Shai Osudoku district of the Greater Accra Region was to, among other reasons, extend help to the students, especially the girls and talk to them about the importance of education.
The host of JoyNews’ ‘Let’s Talk Showbiz’ observed with worry the challenges facing students, a situation that prevents them from accessing quality education, feeding and infrastructure.
She, therefore, called on organisations and philanthropists to support girls in schools located in rural areas.
“Some of us complain daily about the hardship in Accra, Kumasi and major cities across the country. But from what I observed during my visit to the school, I realised that people in rural areas are mostly sidelined and left out in terms of development.
“I believe there is more to be done to support the Luom Presbyterian School, for instance, because they lack almost everything a school needs to thrive. The girls here lack sanitary products, among others.
“This should be a wakeup call to stakeholders and I hope my visit here would highlight their challenges,” Doreen Avio told MyJoyOnline.com in an interview.
Doreen Avio addressing the school
The International Day of the Girl Child is observed globally on every October 11. The observation supports more opportunities for girls and increases awareness of gender inequality faced by girls worldwide based on their gender.
This inequality includes areas such as access to education, nutrition, legal rights, medical care and protection from discrimination, violence against women and forced child marriage.
Doreen had a talk with the pupils under a shed
Through her Doreen Avio Foundation, the host of #MatterDey on Hitz FM partnered with the School Support Programme (SSP) to engage the JHS 3 students ahead of their Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE).
She also interacted with the headmaster and his deputy to find out some of the challenges of the school, which include desks for their classrooms, washrooms and lack of transportation for students who travel long distances to access education.
Later in the day, the students gathered under a shed for the talk.
Doreen Avio also used the opportunity to educate the students on the importance of education and encouraged them to take their studies seriously.
She also advised them to stay away from sexually-related activities and focus more on their books since most of the students were in adolescent age.
Doreen Avio
The students who were so excited about the conversations asked pertinent questions about how they could achieve academic excellence, among others.
In a lovely fashion, Doreen and the school children had some refreshments after which was a distribution of sanitary pads for the girls amid the skyrocketing prices of the products on the market.
She shared her life story to encourage the pupils to pursue excellence
The teachers and students expressed profuse delight in the kind gesture shown by Doreen Avio. They asked that she visits them more often and also call on organisations to also support them.
Previously, the streaming giant has only released snapshots of its viewing data, highlighting the success of its most popular shows.
Barb will begin reporting Netflix’s viewing figures from November.
It is a significant move for the streamer, and will see the data being used by advertisers, competitors and journalists to ascertain the success or failure of Netflix properties.
Netflix is not the only streamer being included – any service which accounts for more than 0.5% of total identified viewing will be listed too. This means content from services such as Disney and Amazon is also likely to be included.
While BARB has been reporting streaming viewing at both a service and programme level since November 2021, only its underwriting organisations and those with a special license previously had access to Netflix’s data.
Barb, which stands for Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board, compiles audience measurement and TV ratings in the UK.
The agency will report Netflix’s ratings in the same way it reports viewing for more than 300 other subscribing broadcast channels.
The networks currently covered by Barb include mainstream services such as the BBC and ITV to smaller channels such as Dave and E4.
Image source, NetflixImage caption, Hit Netflix shows such as Sex Education (pictured) and The Crown could be included in the ratings
Its co-chief executive Reed Hastings said: “Back in 2019, at the RTS conference in Cambridge, I welcomed the idea of Netflix audiences being measured independently.
“We’ve kept in touch with Barb since then and are pleased to make a commitment to its trusted measurement of how people watch television in the UK.”
Justin Sampson, chief executive of Barb, said: “Our audience measurement continuously adapts to accommodate the new platforms and devices that are being used by people to watch their favourite television shows.
“We took a big step forward last year when we started reporting audiences to streaming services.
“Netflix’s commitment to Barb sends a clear signal that what we’re doing is valuable to new and established players in the market.”
Netflix viewing data will be available to all Barb subscribers from the morning of 2 November through its existing analysis software and other systems.
The timing coincides with the launch of season five of royal drama The Crown, which could make a significant impact in Barb’s ratings during the streamer’s first weeks of inclusion.
The highest-altitude cash machine in the world is located at the Khunjerab Pass border between China and Pakistan, at an elevation of 4,693 meters.
Over the past few decades, the ATM has become one of the world’s most ubiquitous pieces of technology, but you wouldn’t expect to see one while trekking through the snow-covered mountains of Pakistan, now would you? And yet, the Khunjerab Pass border pass in Pakistan’s northern Gilgit-Baltistan province is home to the world’s highest fully-functional ATM. Installed by the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) in 2016, the solar- and wind-powered cash machine is a truly unusual sight to behold in such an isolated place as Khunjerab Pass, the highest paved border crossing in the world.
As you can imagine, being located at 4,693 meters above sea level in the middle of nowhere means that the world’s highest ATM isn’t exactly the busiest. It mostly serves the border guards who pick their monthly salaries from it, a handful of locals, and the few people who cross the border through the pass. That said, around 4 to 5 million rupees ($18,350 – $23,000) is withdrawn from the machine every couple of weeks.
A National Bank of Pakistan spokesperson told the BBC that it usually takes a person between two and two and a half hours to reach the world’s highest ATM when it needs emergency repairs. That is actually not bad at all, considering its extreme location. Despite its low volume in transactions, the bank takes this machine seriously because of the people who rely on it.
“They might be insignificant in numbers, but they often reside in the huge park itself and don’t have any other medium to transfer their salaries to loved ones and family,” Zahid Hussain said.
Shares in some of the world’s largest “gig” economy companies have fallen after the US government outlined a plan to change the way workers are treated.
Under the US Labor Department’s proposal, workers would be more likely to be classified as employees instead of independent contractors.
Shares in firms including Uber and Lyft fell by more than 10% on the news.
Tens of millions of people work in the global gig economy across services like food delivery and transport.
Mr Walsh said his department had seen many cases where “employers misclassify their employees as independent contractors, particularly among our nation’s most vulnerable workers.”
“Misclassification deprives workers of their federal labour protections, including their right to be paid their full, legally earned wages,” he added.
Public consultations for the proposal begin on Thursday and are scheduled to run for 45 days.
Uber shares closed 10.4% lower in New York on Tuesday, while Lyft lost 12% and DoorDash ended down by 6%.
Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said the plan was “a clear blow to the gig economy and a near-term concern for the likes of Uber and Lyft.”
“With ride sharing and other gig economy players depending on the contractor business model, a classification to employees would essentially throw the business model upside down and cause some major structural changes,” Mr Ives said in a note.
Uber, Lyft and DoorDash did not immediately respond to BBC requests for comment.
Gig economy firms have come under increased scrutiny as the industry grows in size.
Payments firm Mastercard has estimated that 78 million people will be employed in the gig economy by next year.
Gig workers are paid for individual tasks, such as a food delivery or a car journey, rather than getting a regular wage.
Most US federal and state labour laws, such as those requiring a minimum wage or overtime pay, do not apply to gig workers.
Khloe Kardashian has revealed she’s had an “incredibly rare” tumour removed from her face.
The 38-year-old explained on her Instagram Story that a “small bump” was treated, once she noticed it “was not budging” after seven months.
Khloe was told by doctors she would “need to have an immediate operation”.
She said she shared her experience after seeing “numerous stories” about the “ever-evolving bandage on my face”.
The reality TV star added she hoped it would encourage others to visit the doctor if they noticed changes in their skin.
Khloe said she was “grateful” it was caught early
She is now in the “healing process” and joked that fans could “enjoy how fabulous I’m making these face bandages look”.
Khloe previously had an operation to remove melanoma – a type of skin cancer – when she was 19.
“I had melanoma on my back, and I had a surgery to remove that as well so I am pre-composed to melanomas.”
She urged people to be cautious and “checking all the time”.
“I am someone who wears sunscreen every single day, religiously so no one is exempt from these things. Please take this seriously and do regular self-exams as well as your annual check-ups.”
What is melanoma?
Not the most common or only type of skin cancer, but one of the most serious. Left untreated, it can spread to other organs in the body
About 16,700 people a year are diagnosed with it
Caused by abnormal skin cells that grow out of control due to DNA damage. Intense exposure to UV can trigger this damage
Dr Bav Shergill, of the British Association of Dermatologists, said: “While melanoma is much more common in older people, it does occur in young people. In fact, skin cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer for teenagers and young adults to be diagnosed with”
If you are concerned by a mole or changes to your skin, you should contact your doctor immediately. If moles are itchy or bleed or have irregular shapes, these are warning signs
Most melanomas appear in places you can see, however some can occur in areas such as your nose, mouth, anus, and vagina
Celebrated musician Flowking Stone has given a positive update on his brother Kunta Kinte’s health.
The duo, under the brand name Bradez, were a force to be reckoned with in the early 2000s, but each went solo when Kunta Kinte was hit by a stroke.
Speaking on the health of his brother in an interview on Hitz FM’s Daybreak Hitz, Flowking Stone updated listeners that his brother’s health is a lot better
He revealed that it took series of interventions, adding that his situation “was not a joke”.
In his words, ‘Kunta’s illness affected not just our singing career, but his holistic well-being.’
The ‘Dimple’ hitmaker disclosed that his brother “lost some part of his memory. He lost some parts of his writing skills and others.”
“We wanted him to go at his own pace and not rush him to come back. We didn’t want the situation where he would be in an interview and cannot articulate properly,” he told the host Andy Dosty.
Flowking made the revelation while commenting on the future of the Bradez brand in the Monday morning interview.
According to him, Bradez is set for a great comeback and they would test the waters by releasing remixes of their hit songs.
Popular Jamaican singer and songwriter Orville Thomas, better known by his stage name Da’Ville, has thrown his support behind Africa’s biggest DJ event, the annual Ghana DJ Awards Festival.
The Jamaican reggae act who produced the hit song “Always on my mind” congratulated Merqury Republic, organizers of the festival for creating such a remarkable initiative to change the face of Disc Jockeying and the promotion of music in Africa.
“A big congratulations to Merqury Republic, organizers of the Ghana DJ Awards, Africa’s Biggest DJ Event”, he said in a viral video.
He further applauded the works of Disc Jockeys in Ghana and beyond. “Big ups to all the DJs in Ghana and Africa as a whole for your great works and pushing music beyond boundaries”, the singer added.
Jamaican Star Da’Ville endorses the 2022 Ghana DJ Awards Festival
The Ghana DJ Awards Festival, powered by Joy Entertainment, is an annual celebration which recognizes, empowers and rewards DJs and other creatives. As part of its line-up of activities, the festival will be hosting hundreds of DJs and other creatives on October 15, 2022, at the Accra Tourists Information Centre for the Ghana DJ Clinic, an educational curation of the awards scheme.
On Monday, October 10, 2022, organizers released nominees for the 28 categories which saw last year’s Best DJ of the Year Winner, DJ Vyrusky, bagging the highest nominations for 7 categories.
The 10th edition of the Ghana DJ Awards is scheduled to take place at the Silver Star Towers in Accra on November 5, 2022 at 8pm.
The International Monetary Fund has once again downgraded its forecast for the global economy with a sharp warning: “The worst is yet to come, and for many people 2023 will feel like a recession.”
The agency said Tuesday that it expects global growth to slump to 2.7% next year, with a 25% probability it could fall below 2%. That compares with projected growth of 3.2% this year.
The figure for next year is 0.2 percentage points lower than the IMF’s July outlook, as Russia’s war in Ukraine, high inflation and a slowdown in China drag on activity.
“More than a third of the global economy will contract this year or next, while the three largest economies — the United States, the European Union, and China — will continue to stall,” said Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF’s chief economist.
The prospects for the global economy as outlined by the IMF are the third weakest since 2001, behind only the 2008 financial crisis and the worst phase of the coronavirus pandemic. Global growth has fallen below 2% just five times since 1970.
The IMF believes that global inflation will peak late this year, but will “remain elevated for longer than previously expected,” even as central banks work aggressively to bring it under control.
Global inflation is expected to rise from 4.7% in 2021 to 8.8% this year. It’s then forecast to fall back to 6.5% in 2023 and 4.1% by 2024.
Major central banks aim for inflation near 2%, and have been hiking interest rates in a bid to limit price rises. But the campaign is also boosting risks to the economy.
If they go too hard, it could exacerbate a global downturn, while dialing back efforts could allow inflation — which the IMF called “the most immediate threat to current and future prosperity” — to become entrenched.
“Central banks around the world are now laser-focused on restoring price stability, and the pace of tightening has accelerated sharply,” Gourinchas wrote. “There are risks of both under- and over-tightening.”
Last week, the United Nations Conference on Trade Development cautioned that tighter monetary policy could inflict worse damage globally than the financial crisis in 2008 and the Covid-19 shock in 2020.
The IMF said that higher rates, while necessary, are creating instability, particularly for emerging markets with high levels of debt.
“As the global economy is headed for stormy waters, financial turmoil may well erupt, prompting investors to seek the protection of safe-haven investments, such as US Treasuries, and pushing the dollar even higher,” it said. “Now is the time for emerging market policymakers to batten down the hatches.”
The latest forecasts included some notable downgrades for big economies. The United States is now expected to grow by just 1.6% this year, and is set to expand by only 1% in 2023.
Growth in China has also been revised lower, to 3.2% in 2022 and 4.4% in 2023. The IMF called out the lingering effects of attempts to contain the spread of coronavirus and the rapid weakening of the property sector, which it said accounts for about one-fifth of the country’s economic activity.
“Given the size of China’s economy and its importance for global supply chains, this will weigh heavily on global trade and activity,” the IMF said.
According to him, Black Sherif’s music style does not fall into the regular genre of music available although he takes inspiration from some of them including Highlife.
Speaking on Daybreak Hitz on Hitz FM, Reggie Rockstone said “His sound is so unique. There is nothing out there that sounds like that, nothing, and I listen to music far and wide.”
He added that “the closer people have traced him to sometimes is Okomfour Kwadee and then his highlife roots which he recently spoke on. I am very proud of that. He went right back to the roots of Highlife.”
Reggie Rockstone noted that it is however not by force for the young musician to create a name for his music, especially following the comments by Black Sherif, in an interview, that the youth do not place emphasis on music genres anymore.
“They just wanna listen to music, which is something I didn’t know. Now, I know this because I and my children had an argument in the car and asked if they listen to hiplife. They said no, whatever sounds good is what they listen to, so times change,” he added.
This comes on the back of Black Sherif’s new album ‘The Villain I Never Was’. His debut album has received great reviews from fans and music lovers.
The value of the pound fell and the cost of government borrowing climbed, leading to fears for the financial stability of some pension funds.
How have pension funds been affected?
A sell-off in government bonds, known as gilts, was sparked by the government’s mini-budget.
The government agrees to repay the investor on a certain date in the future, and pays interest in the meantime.
However, the mini-budget hit confidence in the bonds, and investors started demanding a much higher rate of interest in return for buying them.
That caused problems for pension funds, which often buy bonds because they are typically seen as safe investments.
The pension funds affected are so-called “defined benefit” schemes. Often known as final-salary schemes, these pensions pay a proportion of people’s salary at the point they retire.
However, most people are now in “defined contribution” schemes, where the value of the pension depends on how much money people pay in, and how well the scheme’s investments perform over the long term.
These schemes normally don’t invest as much in government bonds, and so have been less affected.
What has the Bank of England done?
It said it would purchase up to £65bn of bonds as a temporary measure.
The cost of government bonds fell when the plan was first announced, but began rising again.
So far the Bank has spent more than £10bn.
How does the bond-buying scheme help pension funds?
As government borrowing costs increased, the insurance providers demanded extra payments.
The pension funds were forced to sell some of their bonds to fund these.
Media caption, What does a billion pounds look like… and what can it buy?
But the more they sold, the more the cost of government borrowing went up, which in turn increased the price of the insurance payments – which led to yet more bond sales.
If this spiral had continued, there was a risk that some pension funds might have reached a position where they could not pay their debts.
The Bank of England programme was designed to stop the prices of government bonds falling further, limiting the need for pension funds to sell any more.
Are pensions at risk?
The Bank’s bond-buying intervention does appear to have worked, and the immediate threat to the financial stability of some defined benefit schemes has passed.
Image caption, Governor Andrew Bailey told the BBC the Bank of England is doing “everything” it can to ensure financial stability
But it’s worth noting that companies which offer defined benefit pension schemes have a legal responsibility to shore them up if necessary.
And in the unlikely event of a company going bust, the schemes themselves are protected.
If you’re in a defined contribution scheme, your pension is less likely to been have affected by the recent crisis. These schemes normally only have a small amount of their investments in government bonds.
However, if you are close to retirement, it’s possible that more of your pension fund has been switched to bonds.
That’s because they normally represent a less risky investment than stocks and shares.
If you are planning to retire soon, it might be useful to talk to an independent financial adviser about your options. You may wish to consider delaying taking your pension, if you can.
Are pension schemes protected?
Pension schemes have very strong protection.
For those in defined benefit schemes, one of the biggest risks is that their employer or ex-employer goes bust.
Such schemes would be protected by the Pension Protection Fund (PPF). The PPF was set up in 2005 after some firms collapsed without enough money to pay their former employees the pension they were owed.
The PPF provides 100% of the pension owed to retired members of a scheme that has become insolvent. Anyone who hadn’t reached retirement age at the point of insolvency gets 90% of their pension.
If you have a defined contribution scheme your pension provider is authorised by the financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority.
If your provider gets into difficulty, you will be able to get some compensation from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
The government’s Money and Pension Service also offers information about saving for retirement on its website or through its helpline 0800 138 7777.
A former national chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Freddie Blay, says his law firm is ready to defend the four accomplices of Aisha Huang because they are innocent.
He said they have no reason to believe or act otherwise, adding that the four Chinese nationals deserve full legal representation in court.
“They came to instruct us and we as professionals, we have sworn an oath to defend our clients to the best of our knowledge and ability and that is exactly what we are doing in accordance with the Constitution of this country.
“They are not guilty. They’ve been brought before the court, they’ve pleaded not guilty and are being defended,” Mr Blay said in an interview on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on Wednesday.
According to him, the four accused persons may have a relationship with Aisha Huang because in 2017 they bought a supermarket from her.
That, in any way, does not suggest they are illegal miners and should not have fair legal representation or defence, Mr Blay stressed.
“Our firm is defending these clients; they’ve told us their story. Maybe the prosecution has been told some other story and that is why we are before the court to defend them,” he added.
“We are a firm of lawyers, we take our instructions from our clients based on the story they’ve told us which we have no reason to believe otherwise.”
He clapped back at critics who say his decision to defend the accused persons defeats government’s fight against ‘galamsey’.
“I don’t know whether you are saying that at a time like this when people are accused or arraigned before court, they should not be entitled to any defence,” he retorted.
NPP justification
Meanwhile, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has justified the decision by its former national chairman, Freddie Blay, to defend four accomplices of ‘galamsey’ queen Aisha Hunag in court.
According to the Communications Director, Richard Ahiagbah, people’s political affiliations should not deny anyone the right to justice and fair representation in court.
“I don’t think there would be any miscarriage of justice because the lawyers in the case are NPP related or have affiliation with the New Patriotic Party.
The idea is that every client deserves a representation; our laws allow for that so the clients have exercised their right to have a legal representation,” he told JoyNews in an interview.
What happened?
A feeling of surprise erupted in the Criminal Court 5 on Tuesday when it was announced that former NPP National Chairman Freddie Blay will be representing four accomplices of Aisha Huang who are being held by the state for their involvement in illegal mining.
Lucy Ekeleba Blay, a private legal practitioner, announced in court that she was holding brief for Freddy Blay in the case of the four accomplices of Aisha Huang namely; Gao Jin Cheng, Lu Qi Jun, Haibin Go and Zhang Zhipeng.
Aisha Huang herself is being represented by NPP stalwart, Nkrabea Effah Dartey.
This move by Mr Blay has sparked discussions among the public as many say it suggests a lack of principles and defeats government’s fight against the canker.
“Those [lawyers] happen to be people affiliated with the NPP; I don’t think that necessarily changes the rules of the court… I think that we should pay attention and see that the due process is occasioned and the outcome is fair to our country,” Richard Ahiagbah noted.
The High Court, on Tuesday, denied two applications for bail by lawyers for the Chinese illegal mining kingpin.
The Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Godfred Dame, and the Lands Minister, Samuel Abu Jinapor, were in court to lead government’s efforts in prosecuting Aisha Huang and others being held for illegal mining.
Displaced families in Syrian camps are begging for donations on TikTok while the company takes up to 70% of the proceeds, a BBC investigation found.
Children are livestreaming on the social media app for hours, pleading for digital gifts with a cash value.
The BBC saw streams earning up to $1,000 (£900) an hour, but found the people in the camps received only a tiny fraction of that.
TikTok said it would take prompt action against “exploitative begging”.
The company said this type of content was not allowed on its platform, and it said its commission from digital gifts was significantly less than 70%. But it declined to confirm the exact amount.
Earlier this year, TikTok users saw their feeds fill with livestreams of families in Syrian camps, drawing support from some viewers and concerns about scams from others.
In the camps in north-west Syria, the BBC found that the trend was being facilitated by so-called “TikTok middlemen”, who provided families with the phones and equipment to go live.
The middlemen said they worked with agencies affiliated to TikTok in China and the Middle East, who gave the families access to TikTok accounts. These agencies are part of TikTok’s global strategy to recruit livestreamers and encourage users to spend more time on the app.
Image caption, Children are livestreaming for hours at a time begging for gifts on TikTok
Since the TikTok algorithm suggests content based on the geographic origin of a user’s phone number, the middlemen said they prefer to use British SIM cards. They say people from the UK are the most generous gifters.
Mona Ali Al-Karim and her six daughters are among the families who go live on TikTok every day, sitting on the floor of their tent for hours, repeating the few English phrases they know: “Please like, please share, please gift.”
Mona’s husband was killed in an airstrike and she is using the livestreams to raise money for an operation for her daughter Sharifa, who is blind.
The gifts they’re asking for are virtual, but they cost the viewers real money and can be withdrawn from the app as cash. Livestream viewers send the gifts – ranging from digital roses, costing a few cents, to virtual lions costing around $500 – to reward or tip creators for content.
For five months, the BBC followed 30 TikTok accounts broadcasting live from Syrian camps for displaced people and built a computer program to scrape information from them, showing that viewers were often donating digital gifts worth up to $1,000 an hour to each account.
Families in the camps said they were receiving only a tiny fraction of these sums, however.
With TikTok declining to say how much it takes from gifts, the BBC ran an experiment to track where the money goes.
A reporter in Syria contacted one of the TikTok-affiliated agencies saying he was living in the camps. He obtained an account and went live, while BBC staff in London sent TikTok gifts worth $106 from another account.
At the end of the livestream, the balance of the Syrian test account was $33. TikTok had taken 69% of the value of the gifts.
Image caption, Keith says 50,000 people watched the TikTok live he did with a Syrian family
TikTok influencer and ex-professional rugby player Keith Mason donated £300 ($330) during one family’s livestream and encouraged his nearly one million followers to do the same.
When told by the BBC that most of these funds were taken by the social media company, he said it was “ridiculous” and “unfair” to families in Syria.
“You’ve got to have some transparency. To me, that’s very greedy. It’s greed,” he said.
The $33 remaining from the BBC’s $106 gift was reduced by a further 10% when it was withdrawn from the local money transfer shop. TikTok middlemen would take 35% of the remainder, leaving a family with just $19.
Hamid, one of the TikTok middlemen in the camps, told the BBC he had sold his livestock to pay for a mobile phone, SIM card and wi-fi connection to work with families on TikTok.
He now broadcasts with 12 different families, for several hours a day.
Hamid said he uses TikTok to help families make a living. He pays them most of the profits, minus his running costs, he said.
Like the other middlemen, Hamid said he was supported by “live agencies” in China, who work directly with TikTok.
“They help us if we have any problems with the app. They unlock blocked accounts. We give them the name of the page, the profile picture, and they open the account,” Hamid said.
Media caption, Hamid helps families go on TikTok live. Watch how the BBC investigated TikTok’s commission from digital gifts
Agencies like these, known as “livestreaming guilds” and based all around the world, are contracted by TikTok to help content creators produce more appealing livestreams.
TikTok pays them a commission according to the duration of livestreams and the value of gifts received, the agencies told the BBC.
The emphasis on duration means TikTokers, including children in the Syrian camps, go live for hours at a time.
Marwa Fatafta, from digital rights organisation Access Now, says these livestreams run contrary to TikTok’s own policies to “prevent the harm, endangerment or exploitation” of minors on the platform.
BBC News investigates a new trend on TikTok – hundreds of families in refugee camps in Syria, begging for gifts on TikTok livestreams.
“TikTok clearly states that users are not allowed to explicitly solicit gifts, so this is a clear violation of their own terms of services, as well as the rights of these people,” she said.
She acknowledges that people have the right to share their stories online “to try to seek support and sympathy”, but she says these livestreams “lack dignity, and are humiliating”.
TikTok’s rules say you must have 1,000 followers before you can go live, you must not directly solicit for gifts and must “prevent the harm, endangerment or exploitation” of minors on the platform.
But when the BBC used the in-app system to report 30 accounts featuring children begging, TikTok said there had been no violation of its policies in any of the cases.
After the BBC contacted TikTok directly for comment, the company banned all of the accounts.
It said in a statement: “We are deeply concerned by the information and allegations brought to us by the BBC, and have taken prompt and rigorous action.
“This type of content is not allowed on our platform, and we are further strengthening our global policies around exploitative begging.”
TikTok, the world’s fastest-growing social media app, has made more than $6.2bn in gross revenue from in-app spending since its launch in 2017, according to analytics company Sensor Tower.
The BBC approached several charities working in Syria to support families in the camps as an alternative to making money on TikTok Live.
A local charity Takaful Alsham said it would provide basic supplies to the families for the next three months, helping the children find schools and covering their educational expenses.
But for many in the camps, there are few options to make money other than begging online. Hundreds of families continue to go live every day, and most of the money donated is still going to TikTok.
As a sports fan, you rarely get the opportunity to see the best athletes and competitors of your generation team up to play alongside each other. We never saw Messi and Ronaldo team up during their prime nor did we see NFL players like Tom Brady and Adrian Peterson create an unstoppable duo but the 2008 U.S. men’s basketball team gave us one of those outliers. Kobe Bryant and LeBron James went from the No. 1 and No. 2 basketball players in the world to teammates in the Olympics. The nostalgia and rarity along with the Olympic success from Redeem Team gave us one of the most iconic teams in not only basketball history but sports history.
The Redeem Team documentary, produced by LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and The Last Dance director John Weinbach, has been the talk of basketball fans of late. The film takes you through the rise of Team USA basketball from being an embarrassment to being the powerhouse it’s become today.
“I can’t speak for Bron, but I know for me it was very important. We were important, we were leaders of that team. We were the voices of that team with our brother Kobe,” Dwyane Wade tells Complex. “When I was approached by the amazing team that you see that got assembled to do this… I jumped right in because I wanted to make sure that if this story was going to be told, that our voices were a big part of it.”
Prior to the film’s release we sat down with NBA legend and Olympic gold medalist Dwyane Wade along with coaching legend Mike Krzyzewski to talk about the documentary, the competition around the world, and the 2008 vs. 2012 Team USA debate.
(This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
What made you both decide to jump on this doc, anything specifically that you and Bron talked about that made you do it?
D-Wade: Yeah, man, I, I can’t speak for Bron, but I know for me it was very important. We were important, we were leaders of that team. We were the voices of that team with our brother Kobe. When I was approached by the amazing team that you see that got assembled to do this, to be a part of it, I jumped right in because I wanted to make sure that if this story was going to be told, that our voices were a big part of it. Our stories were told the way that they needed to be told. Coach K: I loved it because it was an amazing story especially the fact that our players Dwyane and LeBron were so involved. All the access that was given to the NBA, we felt comfortable with them. We didn’t know where it would lead so this is one of the places it’s led to. It’s a great documentary. It’s very real and appropriate.
To D-Wade, with social media obviously Kobe and Bron do get a lot of attention from this team, but do you kind of feel like you were under the radar a little bit? I think it’s fair to say you were kind of the MVP of that team. D-Wade: Do I feel like it? Yeah, I probably did at the time. I mean, I’m on a team with LeBron and Kobe. I, I get it too. You know what I mean? At the same time, I always look at it like this. You have to understand that it’s certain floors in the hotel that you don’t have access to, right? My card don’t go up to where they’ll go up to. I mean, I may stop at the penthouse. They may go a little further (laughs), that other suite higher in a penthouse so I understood that. For me, I was coming off injuries and I was coming off very public personal things going on in my life. The Olympics was just very important for me to reestablish myself and put everything behind me to move forward. And I was just trying to be the best player for that team. And so I had an unbelievable role and my role that I had. I would take it over and over again. I was like Jordan Clarkson for a little while. It felt good.
For both of you. We got a lot of good Kobe anecdotes in the doc. Do you have any Kobe stories that weren’t told in the documentary?
D-Wade: Maybe the first one that comes to mind. And it blew my mind because at that time, I’m 26 years old. Kobe is 30 and Kobe’s the Star. I’m still young enough and coming up, I’ve only been in the league five years. Once I had the conversation with Coach K about, you know, where I was gonna play on the team and I was gonna come off the bench, I think Kobe sensed that, you know, just his innate ability as a leader. He sensed that ‘damn, like this is still D-Wade.’ Like even though he say he cool with it, he wanna be out there with us. And so he came to me and he was like, Yo, when you get in the game and we’re playing together I’m gonna pick up full court and I’m gonna turn my defender around half court, and when I do that, you just come and do what you do.
Coach K: I’ve said so much. I loved Kobe. Not just as a player but as a person and I loved what he did. He was the best player at that time. He understood that. A couple days before practice he came in and met with me. He said I want to play defense. I want to guard the best player. In our first practice he never took a shot. He was so calculated in a positive way to make sure that he fits in. Obviously he fit in very well.
D-Wade: If you notice, I had a lot of steals. I had a lot of guys pressuring and they was letting me play free safety and just allow me to, to run through, come and steal the ball. And that’s why I got a lot of dances and a lot of fast breaks. So to have Kobe Bryant, Kobe, could have told me a young fella, you pick up 94 feet and when you turn ‘em, Imma come in and smash ‘em. Right. But he said, I’m gonna do it. And he set a precedent right there. He set an example that this is not about me, This is bigger than me. I know what you’re great at and I’m gonna put you in a position to succeed.
A Tarkwa Circuit Court judge Hathia Ama Manu has sentenced two Nigerians to 20-year prison terms for engaging in illegal mining, commonly known as galamsey.
The terms will run concurrently.
The convicts, Ayodele Jackson and Benjamin Obin were arrested at Bepoase, near Prestea in the Western Region.
The two men who were sentenced on October 7, pleaded guilty to the charges with the explanation that they were unemployed and hungry, and had only resorted to the galamsey work as a means of surviving.
They told the court that they had only been indulging in the act for about three weeks before their arrest. They were thus convicted on their own plea.
Laying out the fact of the case, the Prosecutor, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Juliana Dadzie told the court that a complaint was made against the accused by two officers of the Minerals Commission.
According to her, the two Minerals Commission staffEmmanuel Morrison and Bismark Mansoh, on a routine patrol in the Prestea area, spotted the accused, with about fifteen others engaging in illegal mining activities with two excavators, a washing plant and a water pumping machine at Bepoase.
Upon seeing the two officers, the miners fled, but the officers managed to apprehend the two expatriates.
They were then handed over to the Police, with the pumping machine and one excavator control board.
The court presided over by judge Hathia Ama Manu described the circumstance under which they had entered into the illegal business as “unfortunate”, but stated that, “the country is at a point where our water bodies, especially those of us in the Western Region, have been destroyed due to illegal mining.”
The Court thus said that the accused had no excuses to justify destroying the environment.
They were sentenced due to the severity of their offence.
The court also ordered that the excavator, with its control board and the water pumping machine be confiscated to the state. They will be handed over to the Minerals Commission.
Charges against Adnan Syed in connection with the Serial case have been dropped, lawyers said on Tuesday.
Per a report from the Associated Press, word of the dropped charges was shared to social media by Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law co-director Laura Nirider. Meanwhile, Erica Suter, a lawyer, told the Baltimore Sun her clients charges had indeed been dropped but did not provide additional information.
When reached for comment by Complex, a rep for Marilyn Mosby, the State’s Attorney for Baltimore, confirmed “the case has been dropped.” Additional details are set to be discussed during a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, which the rep said would be streamed via Facebook.
In September, a judge granted a motion co-filed by Mosby to vacate Syed’s conviction and ask for a new trial. As documented on Sarah Koenig’s Serial podcast, Syed had previously been convicted in the 1999 killing of 18-year-old Hae Min Lee.
“After a nearly year-long investigation reviewing the facts of this case, my team successfully argued that Mr. Syed deserves a new trial where he can be adequately represented and the latest evidence can be presented,” Mosby, whose office noted it lacked “confidence in the integrity” of the conviction, said at the time.
More recently, Mosby issued a public response to remarks from Attorney General Brian Frosh, who had supported efforts to pause the Syed case in response to an appeal push from Lee’s family.
“As opposed to deflecting from his prosecutorial failure, I urge AG Frosh to ‘dig a little deeper’ and evaluate any other errors infringing on the rights of other Marylanders,” Mosby said.
Speaking on Luv FM on Wednesday, he disclosed that throughout his life, he has been consistently perceived as a bad person, even when he had done no wrong.
According to him, this narrative became widespread and soon he also started seeing himself that way.
The ‘Second Sermon’ hitmaker said these circumstances influenced his decision to name his debut album ‘The Villain I Never Was’.
“For some time, I thought I was the bad guy and people thought I was the bad guy, but sitting and being at peace with my soul I realised I am not the bad person in my story and other people’s stories. Mostly, I don’t even care about what people say. I need to have peace with myself.
What someone thinks about me I can’t do anything about it, but I can control how I feel about myself”, he told DJ Reuben, host of DriveTime on Luv.
Explaining the motivation behind the name of the album, he further indicated that, it took him over a year to arrive at the said decision.
“I really do not care about external battles, so I love to blame myself a lot. Whatever happens, I blame myself, because if I blame somebody, how do I then settle it? I don’t know what they are thinking, but if I blame myself, I know I have to make peace with myself and keep going”, he added.
The rapper further described his new album as his autobiography, noting that he used the album to chronicle some salient events in his life.
“There are songs that didn’t make it here. I have been working, recording a bunch of songs, dropping them trying to find out what I really want for this debut album.
I wasn’t just trying to get an album because I have to drop an album. So, I needed to mark my memories, talk about my life and make this album my autobiography”, he concluded.
Fashionista Janie Hayes always wanted to be her own boss. She finally managed it last year, when the clothing boutique she opened in Boise, Idaho during the pandemic started to take off.
Months after opening, the 33-year-old finally managed to quit her waitressing job and focus on the business full-time. Now she is planning to open a second location, and considering adding another person to her staff of three.
“Our growth is better every month,” she says. “At this rate, I think it’s just going to continue to get better.”
Ms Hayes is part of a surprising surge in new business activity that the US has enjoyed since the pandemic hit.
The number of new business applications jumped 24% in 2020, then another 23% last year. And while filings have come down this year, they remain elevated compared to levels before the pandemic.
The gains counter a decades-long decline in start-up rates that had worried economists. Now the question is whether this burst of entrepreneurialism will be sustained or fade into memory as another quirk of the pandemic-era economy.
“It was extremely surprising,” says Kenan Fikri, director of research at the Economic Innovation Group, which has long pushed for policy changes aimed at boosting start-up rates.
“Now, things can go two ways,” he says. “Do we revert back to the pre-pandemic state of affairs where markets remain very concentrated, it’s hard to compete against big companies and it’s hard to get loans and the financial services that you need? Or have we experienced a step change in the background entrepreneurial energy in the American economy?”
Small Business USA
If it’s true to say the US is the engine of the world economy, then small and medium-sized businesses are the fuel that drives that engine.
Small businesses create nearly two-thirds of new jobs in the workforce and account for 44% of US economic activity. So what’s the secret to their success? What challenges do they face and which are the best cities and regions for them to thrive?
Young firms, those in business for less than five years, are typically quite small, employing less than 10% of the private sector workforce in the US.
Despite their size, they play a vital role in the economy, accounting for a disproportionate share of job creation and innovation.
Prior to the pandemic, new companies represented just 8% of America’s firms in 2019, compared with more than 12% in the early 1980s.
Image source, Getty Images
Image caption, Janie Hayes says her business got a boost from the growth the Boise area experienced during the pandemic
Analysts have blamed the long-term decline in new businesses on a range of factors – everything from an ageing workforce to high property prices and the proliferation of anti-competitive practices, like non-compete clauses, raising barriers for would-be entrepreneurs.
Many feared the pandemic would only make things worse.
Instead, the disruption appeared to jolt US entrepreneurialism out of its slump – both by creating new needs for firms to meet, like online workouts, and by giving would-be business owners a bigger financial cushion, as the government provided unusually strong economic support in the form of extended unemployment benefits and stimulus cheques.
The UK, which had faced a similar decline in entrepreneurialism, also saw a surge in start-up activity, which analysts have credited in part to furlough support.
“To me, one of the biggest lessons is that financial security opens the door to entrepreneurship,” Mr Fikri says.
Ms Hayes, who was working as a waitress when the pandemic hit, says she got the confidence to strike out on her own after her savings got a boost thanks to stimulus cheques from the government.
She rented a small shop in May 2020. Business grants, offered through pandemic relief programmes, helped the boutique through its first year, as she fine-tuned the brand and figured out her target customer.
“It definitely helped knowing at the beginning of this that I didn’t have to get a loan. I had the money,” says Ms Hayes, who had been toying with the idea of a store for several years, even launching a website in 2018. “It wasn’t like I was having to go into debt to start something.”
As well as a bigger financial cushion, she says the pandemic also created a bigger market for her products, as a wave of new people moved to the Boise area, in part due to the geographic reshuffling spurred by remote work.
“It’s a lot more people coming in to shop,” she says. “It’s also a lot more style.”
Anne Marie Hamner quit her job running clinical trials in June 2020 to open her own wellness coaching business in Raleigh, North Carolina. She says she had contemplated starting a business long before the pandemic, but she couldn’t have done so without savings and a supportive partner.
Image source, Anne Marie HamnerImage caption, Anne Marie Hamner launched a wellness business in 2020, taking a big income cut
“Not everybody can do this and it’s not because people can’t do it, but just the financial freedom in order to be able to do this is huge,” she says, noting that she took a 75% pay cut to strike out on her own and has picked up some work as a nanny.
“I hope that this is what I can do for the rest of my life. I really hope that financial considerations don’t push me back into clinical trials.”
Filings are only the first sign of a new business. Data on how many have gotten off the ground is still being collected.
But for now, monthly applications for new businesses, which peaked last year, continue to come in at a faster rate than they were in 2019, which is a promising sign.
Still, Kenan Fikri warns that many of the underlying forces long blamed for driving down start-up activity remain unchanged. Much of the government support has also ended.
“There’s reason for both optimism and pessimism on this front,” he says. “All of the forces that were weighing down the vitality of the US economy are still there. We just now have some very strong countervailing forces pushing back.”
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Consistently, he shares his experiences on the farm letting his followers know what crop he harvested, what his next farming endeavour is, among others.
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Pusha-T has shared a few more details on his follow-up to It’s Almost Dry, which he again confirmed is in the works.
Rolling Stone conducted a lengthy interview with Pusha, where he admitted that he was en route to the studio to reunite with Pharrell Williams for his next project.
“I don’t wanna give anything away,” Pusha said. “But the giggles are even more evil than they were the last time.”
Pusha also addressed a possible Clipse reunion, telling RS that he’s doing everything in his power to convince No Malice to reunite.
“I push the button every so often,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Yo, listen to what I just made! We can really do this’—and he brushes me off. … If I had it my way, it would be the Clipse. It’s really up to my brother.”
King Push has said numerous times he’s already returned to the studio, recently telling Spotify that his forthcoming project is “extremely special” to him.
“I’m working on an extremely special project to me right now which I am not going to get into,” Pusha said in September. “It’s just all about music and staying competitive and just showing that there is a space for what it is that I do in hip-hop…and that what I do in hip-hop is the most credible space and takes the most talent…and is just…the realest.”
Pusha also spoke of a new album in an interview with GQ back in May, when he previewed an unreleased track and told the outlet that work had already begun on a new project.
“This is a new era for me, for sure,” Push said of the work-in-progress. “Don’t you hear the flows, you hear the tones, you hear the character? Listen, remember what Big sounded like in ’94? … Then he turned to the [smoother] Frank White persona by ’96. By ’97 it was full blown. And by the time the transformation is done [my craft] will be mastered and ready. You’ll have a niche product.”
Pusha most recently dropped off new music when he collaborated with Arby’s to take aim at McDonald’s, and returned again with another track called “Rib Roast” in September.
“I want to check all of these boxes,” Push told Complex of the Arby’s tracks. “This race that I’m running right now is honestly to try to see how far the sub genre of street hip hop can go. I love the fact that I’m in business with Arby’s. We can show how far creativity stretches. We can show how far the talent level for street hip hop can go and how it can bleed into different arenas and genres and businesses and everything else.”
He added that his new project has also found him reuniting with Kanye West and partnering with No I.D.
“Everyone I’m working with is feeling very competitive, trying not to be outdone,” Pusha said. “That just makes my job harder because I’m trying to outdo producers who are also great artists who are also great rappers and composers. That makes my battle twice as hard. But it makes for the best rap music.”
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has doubled down on criticism of the chancellor’s mini-budget, days after warning it will fuel rising prices.
The body, which works to stabilise economic growth, admitted tax cuts announced by Kwasi Kwarteng would boost growth in the short-term.
But it said the cuts would “complicate the fight” against soaring prices.
It expects high prices to last longer in the UK with only Slovakia out of the eurozone set to see higher inflation.
Inflation, which measures how the cost of living changes over time, is expected to peak at about 11.3% before the end of the year in the UK, according to the IMF’s latest assessment of the global economy.
In each of the next two years, it expects price rises will average at about 9% – far above the Bank of England’s target of 2%.
The most recent figures included in the report by the influential financial institution do not fully, however, take into account the UK chancellor’s recent mini-budget.
It was an unusually outspoken statement from the IMF, which has a key role in acting as an early economic warning system.
The IMF said it understood the government’s mini-budget aimed to boost growth, but it said that the tax cuts could speed up the pace of price rises, which the UK’s central bank, the Bank of England, is trying to bring down.
Downing Street defended the chancellor’s plans, with the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson saying its policies aimed “to support British people at a time of global high prices” and said the IMF report showed “the global challenges that countries are facing”.
The IMF warned the global economy was facing a downturn with “the worst yet to come” as war in Ukraine helps push prices higher around the globe.
“For many people 2023 will feel like a recession,” it warned.
It said governments and central banks globally had to work together to help people through the turmoil.
The IMF’s Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told the BBC: “Imagine a car with two drivers at the front and each of them has a steering wheel – and one wants to go left and the other wants to go right.”
He added: “One is the central bank trying to cool off the economy so that price pressures will ease, and the other one wants to spend more to support families… it’s probably not going to work very well.”
In the UK, the chancellor has already said he will bring forward his economic plan where he will spell out how he plans to pay for the tax cuts and provide an independent forecast on the UK economy’s prospects, a move welcomed by the IMF.
However on Tuesday, government borrowing costs remained close to the levels seen at the height of the market turmoil last month despite fresh action from the Bank of England to try and stabilise financial markets.
The IMF has said “the worst is yet to come” in the world economy, saying “for many people 2023 will feel like a recession”.
It made the comments as it downgraded forecast growth around the world as a result of a longer-lasting inflationary shock, arising from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Rising global interest rates, and a strong dollar, are adding to these pressures, said the world’s most important international financial institution.
The direct impact of the gas shutdowns in continental Europe means some major economies are hit even more badly – Germany and Italy are now predicted to contract next year. The projections do not fully take into account the chancellor’s mini budget and its aftermath, which will “lift growth somewhat in the near term”, but “complicate the fight against inflation”.
The IMF criticised the UK’s mini-budget in stark terms last month, and also repeated a more general warning about untargeted fiscal support, without mentioning the UK specifically.
The IMF also cautioned that governments would need to protect the least well-off from the impact of higher prices.
Poorer households often spend relatively more than others on food, heating, and fuel, it pointed out – all areas that have seen steep price rises as energy and grain exports have been restricted after the invasion of Ukraine.
And countries that are reliant on Russian gas in Europe are being hit particularly badly. Germany’s economy, for example, is now predicted to contract next year.
Meanwhile, Russia’s economy is expected to contract by 2.3% next year, the biggest fall of all the nations included in the projections.
Speaking on Monday, IMF boss Kristalina Georgieva noted that growth was also being dragged down in China by continued Covid restrictions, while in the US rising interest rates were “starting to bite”.
At the first in-person meetings between the IMF and the World Bank since the pandemic, she said countries could “reduce the pain ahead of us in 2023” by acting together.
She added that the IMF will be pushing for major economies to carry on with their efforts to bring down the cost of living, even if they have a negative impact on economic growth.
If they don’t do enough, she said, “we are in trouble. We cannot afford inflation to be a runaway train.”
A young girl believed to be 12-year-old has met her untimely death after she was knocked down by a speeding vehicle at Kotwi in the Atwima Kwanwoma District of the Ashanti region.
The unfortunate accident occurred on Tuesday, October 11, 2022, around 5:00 pm.
Some eyewitness who narrated the story to OTEC News Kwame Agyenim Boateng said the girl was crossing the road when the Nissan Navara Pick-Up with registration number AC-884-21 hit her.
“She had just gotten off a commercial vehicle and was crossing the road, but was knocked down by the vehicle.”
“Some Emergency Medical Attendants and Paramedics who rushed to the scene declared the girl dead and left her at the scene”. A witness told OTEC News.
Meanwhile, policein the area were at the scene to help ease the vehicular traffic caused by the accident.
The body was however conveyed to the mortuary for further investigations.
William Shatner, who last year made much-discussed history as the oldest person to fly to the edge of space, speaks candidly about the uniquely moving moment in his latest book.
Per an excerpt published last week by Variety, Shatner compared having the opportunity to view Earth from above to “a funeral” and detailed the “overwhelming sadness” he felt as he pondered the ongoing damage humans are leveling against the planet.
“It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered,” Shatner said in Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder, which was released this month via Simon & Schuster. “The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind.”
This reality, Shatner added, filled him “with dread” and contributed to that aforementioned funeral comparison.
“My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral,” the revered Star Trek actor and prolific pop culture personality said.
Shatner’s comments shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the oft-existential assessment of life as we know it from those who’ve traveled beyond the (increasingly apparent) confines of our planet. In fact, such talk has surrounded the perspective-shifting experience since the inception of space travel. The impact felt by astronauts in the past, for example, remains a point of great fascination among space enthusiasts. (This facet of space-minded progress has been made even more clear in recent years due to the wave of developments on the UAP front).
Last October, Shatner embarked on his history-making mission as a crew member aboard a vessel from Blue Origin, an aerospace company founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Ahead of the mission, Shatner called the opportunity to join his fellow crew members in the skies as a “miracle.” Notably, he was 90 years old at the time of the flight.
“I’ve heard about space for a long time now,” Shatner said prior to launch. “I’m taking the opportunity to see it for myself.”
Tom Hanks, meanwhile, quite hilariously revealed why he turned down a Blue Origin spot of his own last November.
Grammy-nominated American gospel singer Travis Greene has been billed as the headline artiste for Adom FM’s annual concert, Adom Praiz 2022.
The event is set to happen at the Perez Dome on November 4, 2022, with other renowned Ghanaian gospel musicians such as Diana Hamilton and Ohemaa Mercy.
The list continues with Celestine Donkor, Perez Music, Jack Alolome and Edwin Dadson among other notable gospel maestros who are eager to shake up the auditorium.
He has since released two studio albums, Stretching Out in 2010, The Hill in 2015, and an EP, Intentional in 2015. He also released his live-recorded third album, Crossover: Live From Music City in 2017.
Greene’s music has charted on the Billboard Top Gospel Albums and the Top Gospel Songs charts, and he has been nominated for multiple awards, including five Grammy Awards and 13 Stellar Awards.
Greene and his wife lead Forward City Church in Columbia, South Carolina.
Meanwhile, the official launch for the Adom Praiz show is scheduled to take place at Adom FM’s Adom Live Worship show on Wednesday, October 12.
Interestingly, this year’s event will span two days, as Adom FM intends to give many budding gospel musicians the chance to showcase their talents at the Praiz festival on the first day, prior to the main show on November 4.
The annual Adom Praiz concert, powered by Adom 106.3FM, has over the years seen some of the world’s biggest music acts give off electrifying performances that have left lasting memories on patrons.
The concert will this time have live patrons in the auditorium as the pandemic had the 2021 edition in virtual mode.
The ticket prices for this year’s event are GH₵ 150 for couples, and GH₵ 100 for singles.
“What has caused the effect in pension funds… is not necessarily the mini-budget. It could just as easily be the fact that the day before the Bank of England did not raise interest rates as much as the (US) Federal Reserve did,” he said.
“Jumping to conclusions about causality is not meeting the BBC’s requirement for impartiality” he said, after a suggestion the chancellor’s actions had been the trigger for the fluctuations in the value of the pound and government bonds.
At the first PMQs since the mini-budget, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer accused Prime Minister Liz Truss of “ducking the question” when asked whether she agreed with the business secretary.
Ms Truss said the government had taken “decisive action”, adding “as a result of our action… we will see higher growth and lower inflation.”
‘Straw that broke camel’s back’
Deutsche Bank’s chief UK economist Sanjay Raja told MPs the mini-budget on 23 September was the “straw that broke the camel’s back”.
He said the “trade shock” because of Brexit is a factor, and added: “You throw on the 23 September event, you’ve got a side-lined financial watchdog, you’ve got lack of a medium-term fiscal plan, one of the largest unfunded tax cuts we’ve seen since the early 1970s, it was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
The Resolution Foundation’s Torsten Bell said it was clear the huge package of cuts, which was downgraded to £43bn after Mr Kwarteng’s U-turn on the top rate of income tax, should not have happened in the current financial climate.
He also said the sacking of the Treasury’s top civil servant Sir Tom Scholar had contributed.
“Yes, firing Treasury civil servants isn’t a good idea, that hasn’t helped, side-lining your fiscal watchdog hasn’t helped,” he told the MPs.
Image source, Getty Images
Image caption, Experts believe Mr Kwarteng will have to row back on more of his tax cuts or drastically cut public spending.
He added that after Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced a plan that “dumped fiscal orthodoxy”, then vowed to bring forward further tax cuts, it was “no surprise to any of us that this is where you end up”.
“This is what happens if you aren’t paying attention,” he said. “It was always going to be hard but it was exactly because it was always going to be hard that you don’t do this.”
Head of Multi Asset at Royal London Asset Management, Trevor Greetham, told the BBC that the risk of a recession has increased because of the market turmoil, which he said he believed was linked to the mini-budget.
“There is frustration that hard-won credibility for the UK market has been lost,” he added.
“And if you read some of the commentary from overseas, it is pretty damning at the moment.”
Professor Jagjit Chadha, director of National Institute of Economic and Social Research (Niesr) agreed that the market turmoil was a result of the “undermining” of the “cooperative arrangement” between UK’s leading financial institutions.
Should governments announce major tax cuts again without consulting the UK’s top financial bodies, Professor Chadha warned that a “succession of higher interest rates and higher deficits” would result.
Professor Chadha told the Commons Treasury Committee that the “real danger” seen after the mini-budget was “obviously on the back of what can only be described as guerrilla tactics against our independent economic institutions over the summer – the Treasury, the Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility”.
Gerard Lyons, an economist who advised Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng during the leadership contest, speaking on the BBC’s World at One programme admitted that the mini-budget “misread” the country’s financial situation.
However, he argued that everything that has happened was not “solely due to the mini-budget” but also down to parts of the financial system that were vulnerable to interest rates going up.
The Bank of England has warned interest rates could rise again after the value of the pound plummeted, following the government’s decision to cut taxes and borrow more.
After the market turmoil, it stepped in with an emergency bond-buying intervention designed to stabilise the economy but said this scheme would end on Friday.
Prime Minister Liz Truss has said the promised tax cuts will boost UK economic growth and therefore help pay for themselves.
The chancellor has also committed to publishing an independent forecast of the UK’s economic prospects by the OBR, the independent budget watchdog, at the same time as his economic plan – something he declined to do with his mini-budget.
Meanwhile, the UK economy unexpectedly shrank by 0.3% in August, according to new figures from the Office for National Statistics.
The Lands Minister says government will go after all persons involved in illegal mining activities in the country.
Samuel Abdulai Jinaporsaid government will not shield any “big man or woman” in the fight.
According to him, the government does not have the luxury of cherry-picking who is dealt with and who is not.
Speaking on the JoyFM’s Super Morning Show on Wednesday, October 12, Mr Jinapor insisted the government is prepared to go for the long haul in this fight.
He thus asked persons involved in the menace to take a cue from the prosecution of Aisha Huang.
“This is not a time where we can choose and pick and say this person is a journalist so she cannot be touched or be touched or this person is a politician and therefore, the person is shielded or this person is on government or this person is a businesswoman.
“Nobody will be shielded. We are going to go about without fear or favour and the prosecution of Aisha Huang should be a clear testimony and should send a clear signal to those who are determined to carry on with this menace.
I should call that way that we will come after them and come after them ruthlessly,” he warned.
Mr Jinapor thus asked the Ghanaian people to have full assurance in the government to deal effectively with the canker.
To him, the government will deploy all the arsenal it has at its disposal in this fight.
According to him, this will be done ruthlessly.
“Well, I want to emphasise that the commitment of the government to the fight against this canker [Galamsey] is total and unflinching and all the various tools we have to enable us to come to grips of this illegal mining issue will be rolled out ruthlessly.”
Brian Robinson, the former Alabama running back who was drafted by the Washington Commanders in the third round of last year’s draft, made his NFL debut this weekend just six weeks after he was shot during an attempted robbery.
Robinson took the field against the Tennessee Titans on Sunday with an entrance that was soundtracked by “Many Men,” a classic track from 50 Cent’s 2003 debut album Get Rich or Die Tryin’.
50 Cent, who has been shot multiple times as well, took to Instagram early Monday morning to shout out Robinson for handling adversity in impressive fashion.
“That shit ain’t stop nothing, when God has bigger plans it’s just a bump in the road. @b.robinson_4 right back in action,” Fif wrote on Instagram.
Though Robinson finished the game with only 22 rushing yards on 9 carries, as Washington lost to Tennessee 21-17, the rookie’s return to the field less than two months after suffering a near-fatal shooting was remarkable in of itself.
“That was one of those remarkable feelings,” Robinson told reporters after the game. “I can’t even really explain it.”
After returning to practice last Wednesday, Robinson, who was shot multiple times during a carjacking on Aug. 28, remained in good spirits. “I feel good, man,” he shared. “It’s just being back out on the field. I mean, the ups and downs, but today everything finally came into the light. I’m just so blessed to be back out there with all the fans, the team, everybody involved.”
Ghana Revenue Authority’s enforcement of the E-VAT Invoicing system introduced on October 1, 2022, has led to the closure of four branches of Palace Mall.
On Tuesday, October 11, 2022, the Labone, Spintex, Atomic roundabout and Weija branches of Palace Mallwere closed down.
This is not the first company to be penalised for failing to fix their tax electronic collection system to enable the GRA access its data.
On Monday, October 10, 2022, the Spintex Road and Ashaiman branches of China Mall were shut down until a time management of the company decides to implement the E-VAT in its operations.
The GRA enforcement team has also shut down the Weija branch of the China Mall, bringing the number of branches of the company to five. Per reports, the Weija branch has also been closed down.
He said the Authority is mandated to ensure maximum compliance with all relevant tax laws in order to ensure a sustainable revenue stream for government, trade facilitation and a controlled and safe flow of goods across the country’s borders, thus all flouting companies would be brought to book.
“We shall not rest until the right thing is done, because as I always say, we don’t feel comfortable going around closing shops and do- ing all these operations. But the citizens have paid us to work and so we shall ensure that the right thing is done,” he said.
Actor Prince David Osei has said that he will not let his affiliation with the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) stop him from voicing his displeasure about the economic situation in the country.
In a post on Instagram, he noted that his only aim is to help push for a better Ghana for everyone despite people’s political affiliations.
Prince David Osei wrote “I speak to the issues that’s all, I am NPP just as others are NDC and other parties, but that doesn’t mean I will keep quiet when things are going bad in the country. I wish to push the agenda of a better Ghana for all irrespective of party lines, so help me God!!”
This comes after the actor was trolled by some social media users for threatening to organise a demonstration if things do not improve by December.
However, many of his critics say the actor is now feeling the pinch of the economy, hence the change in his perspective in line with that of the majority of the youth.
Some Twitter users recalled that Prince David Oseiat the time the youth were calling on the government to fix the county was pushing the ‘fix yourself’ narrative.
However, Prince David Osei stated that despite the criticisms, he is not perturbed and will continue to make his views about the government’s management of the economy known.
“I stood on political platforms to campaign for NPP. If someone doesn’t get the drift then I am sorry, I can’t help you! Lastly, thank you Haters and those insulting me, bringing back my campaign videos and pictures, I no vex, it is part of the game, I love you all. Please keep trolls coming so we maintain no 1 on Twitter,” he added.
Anna Sorokin, the fake German heiress who was the subject of Netflix’s Inventing Anna drama series, has given her first interview following her release from jail.
The Russian-born con-artist, who posed as an heiress named Anna Delvey in New York from 2013 until her arrest in 2017, was released earlier this month on a $10,000 bail bond. Currently under house arrest, she’s facing the threat of deportation but she told TNYT that she hopes to remain in the United States.
“So many immigration lawyers told me I’d get deported to Mars before I’d get out in New York,” Sorokin, who was released from prison in February 2021 after she paid back her victims, told the New York Times. wh3 was later arrested again when U.S. Immigrant and Customs Enforcement took her in for overstaying her visa.
“I just did not want it to go down the way ICE wanted it to,” when asked why she didn’t choose to fight for her immigration status from Germany, instead. “Letting them deport me would have been like a sign of capitulation—confirmation of this perception of me as this shallow person who only cares about obscene wealth, and that’s just not the reality. I could have left, but I chose not to because I’m trying to fix what I’ve done wrong. I have so much history in New York and I felt like if I were in Europe, I’d be running from something. But if jail does not prove people wrong, then what will?”
In the interview, Sorokin also reflected on how she feels about the fraud she committed during her mid-20s. “I am regretful about the way things played out,” she added. “The way I’ve tried to see my experience is to learn from it: Who I am today is because of the decisions I made in the past.” As for what she has planned for the future,Sorokine said that art is “definitely” one of the projects she’s working on.
“I have a lot going on. I’m working on my own podcast with different guests for each episode. But it’s not shaped up yet,” she said. “It was pretty hard to record anything high quality from jail. And then there’s my book. I’d love to do something with criminal-justice reform to kind of highlight the struggles of other girls.”
After the Bank of England reiterated that its emergency bond-buying program will end this week and denied rumours that it would be prolonged, investors remained uneasy.
As stated earlier, the assistance would stop on Friday, according to the statement.
In order to keep bond prices stable and avoid a sale that may jeopardize some pension plans, the Bank is purchasing bonds.
Following the statement, bond sales increased and borrowing costs nearly reached their peak from when the Bank initially intervened to quell market turbulence following the mini-budget.
Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s plans for huge tax cuts without a clear indication of how they would be paid for sparked a dramatic reaction on financial markets last month. The pound fell to a record low and bond prices also fell sharply forcing the Bank of England to step in to stop their price falling further.
The government raises money it needs for spending by selling bonds – a form of debt that is paid back plus interest in anywhere between five and 30 years.
Pension funds invest in bonds because they provide a low but usually reliable return over a long period of time.
However, the sharp fall in their value after the mini-budget forced pension funds to sell bonds, threatening to create a “downward spiral” in their prices as more were offloaded, which left some funds close to collapse.
On Tuesday evening Andrew Bailey told pension funds: “You’ve got three days left now and you’ve got to sort it out.”
The pound initially fell sharply against the dollar before steadying, after Mr Bailey’s surprisingly blunt statement, which dashed hopes the support could be extended.
Mr Bailey told the BBC he had stayed up all night to try and find a way to calm markets and said the Bank was doing everything it could to preserve financial stability, but said it had always been clear that the help would be temporary.
He said it was now down to financial firms to arrange their affairs, saying pension funds had “an important task” to ensure they are resilient.
“I’m afraid this has to be done, for the sake of financial stability,” he said.
Members of the Bank’s Financial Policy Committee (FPC), which helps to protect UK financial stability, said on Wednesday that the governor was crystal clear the bond-buying programme would end, although other support measures would remain in place.
The recent turmoil has already fed through to the mortgage market, where hundreds of products have been suspended as the volatility has made it difficult for lenders to know how to price these long-term loans.
The Bank’s FPC said that this was likely to put households under severe pressure next year.
‘Uncharted territory’
Earlier, pensions industry body the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association had warned against the help ending “too soon”.
It suggested the support should be extended until 31 October, when chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is due to detail his economic plan explaining how he will balance the public finances. The statement will be accompanied by independent forecasts on the prospects for the UK economy.
The government has said it remains confident in its tax cuts plan, with Mr Kwarteng telling MPs he was “relentlessly focused on growing the economy” and “raising living standards”.
But Mr Bailey’s words further increases the pressure on the government, and the chancellor, to come up with an economically credible and politically viable debt plan, and quickly.
Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “This is a Tory crisis that has been made in Downing Street, and that is being paid for by working people.”
Former IMF deputy director Mohamed El-Erian told BBC News that the economy was on “shaky ground”.
He said financial systems going into turmoil “can cause a lot of damage”.
In its latest World Economic Outlook report on Tuesday, the IMF acknowledged the mini-budget would “lift growth somewhat in the near term”, although it would “complicate the fight” against the cost-of-living crisis.
Retail trade in the country could grind to a halt by the close of work on Wednesday as the Greater Accra Regional branch of the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) joins their counterparts in Kumasi to close down their shops.
This is in protest of what they describe as the unfair implementation of tax measures by the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA).
The shutdown of shops is in its third day in Kumasi and the traders have vowed to sustain the action until the GRA withdraws their personnel stationed at shops, restaurants, and other businesses to record sales of products for tax purposes.
The National President of GUTA, Dr. Joseph Obeng, in this regard urged its members nationwide to close their shops, accusing the GRA of unfairness and high handedness in the implementation of the policy.
“You have a system that does not ensure fairness, you have a system that does not ensure equity, you have a system that runs trade concurrently in the same market that we have the standard rate that one pays 90.25 percent and then we have VAT rate of four percent and then we have those who do not pay the VAT at all and they are all legitimate. What system is this?” he questioned GRA.
According to him, “what GRA has done to the VAT system makes compliance very difficult.”
This, he claims, is due to the current economic downturn, which makes it difficult for businesses to thrive with exchange rates collapsing their capitals.
But the Ghana Revenue Authority says it won’t tolerate excuses from companies who refuse to register on its new electronic platform.
The Authority has already shut down major trading franchises including the China Mall, Palace Mall and the Regal Chinese Restaurant in Osu for failing to list.
The officials of the GRA are on the move again saying there are more companies that will suffer closure if they ignore the caution.
Mr. Phillip Acquah, the Assistant Commissioner, VAT Administration, at the GRA urged businesses to cooperate with the Authority to ensure that their systems are onboard the platform.
Meanwhile, an executive member of the Adum Traders Association in Ghana, Charles Appiah Kubi said that until the challenges are resolved, they will remain closed indefinitely.
According to him, as businesses, they are not against the payment of taxes, however the structure of the VAT system is hindering the payment.
“We have not said that we don’t want to pay taxes … our market is so unique that you do not impose taxes that do not sit with the dynamics within the market ..so when you introduce VAT into our system, you have few businesses that have registered for VAT if they have to add the six percent levy on it, their prices go so high that customers do not to buy from them and rather buy from those not registered for VAT with cheaper prices,” he said.
“How do I learn how to breathe my own breath again?”
This is among the questions posed by Selena Gomez in the just-released trailer for director Alek Keshishian’s upcoming Apple Original Films documentary My Mind & Me. Shared on Monday, which marks World Mental Health Day, the trailer gives fans the deepest look yet at the doc set to debut on Apple TV+ next month.
“Just be who you are, Selena,” Gomez is heard via narration in the trailer’s opening moments. “No one cares about what you’re doing. It’s about who I am, being okay with where I am. I am grateful to be alive.”
The doc is expected to see Gomez providing fans with an intimate look at her experiences with lupus, depression, and anxiety. Monday’s two-minute glimpse points to Gomez having come to the conclusion that fame can be of value if it’s used for the greater good, all while touting the importance of connection when it comes to getting outside of one’s own head.
Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me will debut on Nov. 4 via Apple TV+. Keshishian, of course, is known for previous work including directing Madonna’s Truth or Dare in 1991.
Gomez is currently fresh off the second season of her blockbuster Hulu series Only Murders in the Building, co-starring Steve Martin and Martin Short. In August, Gomez was revealed to be in negotiations about producing a Working Girl reboot.
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