As part of pursing a career in media, Anita Akuffo had a masterplan of participating in a beauty pageant which will ultimately end her on the screens.
In a relationship then in her second year in the University, she discussed this idea of the beauty pageant with her then boyfriend who was strongly against it.
The TV3 Entertainment News Anchor was left with the option of choosing between the relationship or her career. Anita Akuffo said on Instagram Stories that she declared that Miss Malaika would be the perfect method for her to fulfil her dream of working on television as she had always dreamed of working on television.
However, her partner was adamantly against the idea when they had a discussion. She went on to list all the advantages of competing in the pageant but the partner still was against it. Anita eventually chose her career and went on to try out for the Miss Malaika Pageant.
Anita shared a moral lesson in her story by telling young ladies to surround themselves with dream-supporters.
Anita Akuffo is a Ghanaian model and TV presenter. Anita Akua Akuffo came out as the second runner-up at Miss ECOWAS 2012 and also made it as a Miss Malaika finalist.
Artistes, music executives, instrumentalists, composers, and all music industry stakeholders can submit their musical works for nomination in the 25th Ghana Music Awards.
The organisers of the prestigious awards scheme, Charterhouse, are receiving the nominations till February 29, 2024.
Works should be submitted via the Ghana Music Awards website www.entry.ghanamusicawards.com. These songs should have been released from January 1 to December 31, 2024.
Being the 25th anniversary celebration of the awards scheme, it is expected to come with a lot of pomp, pageantry, splendour and a lot of surprises.
The Ghana Music Awards, for the past 25 years has consistently celebrated the efforts Ghanaian music and music professionals.
Albania’s Constitutional Court on Monday approved a controversial deal signed with Italy to host two holding centres for migrants rescued in Italian waters. But the agreement has sparked anger among politicians in both countries and human rights groups who describe it as “dehumanising”.
The agreement has been condemned by opposition parties in both countries, as well as rights groups, resulting in a legal challenge taken up by the top court in Tirana.
“The agreement does not harm Albania’s territorial integrity,” the court said in a statement.
The ruling comes just days after Italian MPs voted in favour of the agreement – with the lower chamber of parliament backing the protocol by 155 votes to 115, with two abstentions.
During the parliamentary debate, opposition MPs accused Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of using migrants as “electoral propaganda”, saying the project would have little impact on numbers and was hugely costly.
The Albanian right-wing opposition has lambasted Prime Minister Edi Rama for an alleged lack of transparency over the agreement, calling the deal an “irresponsible and dangerous act for national security”.
The United States has begun reimposing sanctions on Venezuela by restricting its mining sector after the South American nation’s top court upheld the disqualification of an opposition presidential hopeful.
Any US companies doing business with Venezuela’s state-owned mining concern Minerven have until February 13 to complete a “wind down of transactions” with the company, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said on Monday,
The US warned Venezuela at the weekend that it could end some sanctions relief granted last year when Caracas agreed to a deal for elections in 2024, including setting up a process for would-be candidates to challenge their disqualification.
On Friday, Venezuela’s Supreme Court, loyal to President Nicolas Maduro’s government, upheld a 15-year ban on opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and also confirmed the ineligibility of her possible replacement, two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles.
Matthew (left), Syed Zain and Maurice have filed a lawsuit against state and local governments
Three foreign-born residents in Japan have sued the country’s authorities over alleged racial profiling. The plaintiffs say they have suffered distress from repeated police questioning based on their appearances.
“There’s a very strong image that ‘foreigner’ equals ‘criminal’,” Pakistan-born Syed Zain told reporters. The lawsuit filed on Monday aims to confirm that racial profiling is illegal and to seek 3m yen ($20,250; £15,740) in damages for each plaintiff.
This is the first such lawsuit in Japan, according to the men’s lawyer, Motoki Taniguchi.
Mr Zain, who is a Pakistan-born Japanese citizen, has lived in Japan for two decades, went to school there and is fluent in Japanese. The 26-year-old told a press conference on Monday that he has often been stopped, questioned and searched by police.
“The time has come to rethink the way police questioning is handled.” he said.
The UN defines racial profiling as “the process by which law enforcement relies on generalisations based on one’s race, skin colour, descent or national or ethnic origin.
Former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan has been sentenced to 10 years in jail in a case in which he was charged with leaking state secrets.
Khan, who was ousted by his opponents as PM in 2022, is already serving a three-year jail term after being convicted of corruption.
He has called all the charges against him politically motivated.
The conviction under the secrets act comes the week before general elections in which he is barred from standing.
Former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi – vice-chairman of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party – was also sentenced to 10 years in prison by the special court.
The so-called cipher case revolves around the alleged leaking of secret diplomatic correspondence sent by Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington to Islamabad when Khan was prime minister.
It relates to his appearance at a rally in March 2022, a month before he was ousted from power in a parliamentary vote of no confidence.
Israeli forces have killed three members of Palestinian armed groups in a hospital in the occupied West Bank. CCTV footage showed members of an undercover unit disguised as medics and other civilians making their way through a corridor with rifles raised.
The Israeli military said the men were hiding in the Jenin hospital, and that one was about to carry out an attack. The Palestinian Authority’s ministry of health accused Israel of carrying out a “new massacre inside hospitals”.
Hamas, an armed Palestinian Islamist group which is fighting a war with Israel in Gaza triggered by its unprecedented attacks on Israel on 7 October, said the Israeli forces had “executed three fighters”, including one of its members
Another armed group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said two of those killed were its members and were brothers. It added that one of them had been receiving treatment at the hospital.
Since 7 October, Israeli forces have killed at least 357 Palestinians – militants, civilians and attackers – in the West Bank, while Israeli settlers have killed at least eight, according to the United Nations. Palestinians from the West Bank have killed at least 10 Israelis in attacks in the West Bank and Israel in the same period.
Vietnam and the Philippines have agreed to cooperate on maritime security in the South China Sea, a conduit for $3 trillion of annual shipborne trade that China claims almost in its entirety.
The deals, signed during a state visit to Hanoi by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr on Tuesday, will see the two countries’ coastguards working together to prevent and manage incidents in the disputed waters.
The South China Sea is at the centre of territorial tussles between China, the Philippines and other countries. China claims almost the entire sea as its sovereign territory, while the Philippines, Vietnam and others claim various islands, islets, reefs and shoals.
Tensions between the Philippines, a United States ally, and China over the waters recently reached boiling point. At the end of last year, the Philippines accused China of “swarming” the Whitsun Reef off its coast. China, for its part, accused the Philippines of provocations in the Second Thomas Shoal waterway.
Earlier this month, China held military drills in the South China Sea as the US and the Philippines conducted their own joint exercises in the same waters.
Dr. Kingsley Agyemang, Registrar of the Ghana Scholarship Secretariat
The Registrar of the Ghana Scholarship Secretariat, Dr. Kingsley Agyemang, has assured residents in the Abuakwa South Constituency of his readiness to bring more developmental projects to the area.
According to him, the life of residents in the area could only improve when there are conscious development projects, a position that is motivating him to represent Abuakwa South in the next parliament.
“We will only see more of these developmental projects I have been doing in Abuakwa South, should we maintain power in 2024, that is why the NPP members need to involve themselves in the campaign and help Dr. Bawumia to win the elections”, he indicated.
He made the remarks in his maiden speech to delegates last Saturday, shortly after he was declared the Parliamentary Candidate (PC) to lead the area into the upcoming 2024 general elections.
Bismark Mborchie, a Visual Arts Tutor at Benkum Senior High School, is leading a creative initiative to enhance road safety education through concept drawings to visualize road safety education, providing a unique and engaging perspective for drivers and road users.
His motivation is borne out of worrying statistics provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on road safety in Africa, which Ghana is part.
According to the report, the African region accounts for 16% of global road traffic deaths despite having only 2% of registered vehicles in the world.
Despite a marginal reduction in road crashes in Ghana, a report by the Motor Transport and Traffic Directorate (MTTD) disclosed that 1,086 people lost their lives in road crashes from January to June 2023.
In 2022, out of 14,960 reported road crashes 2,373 lives were lost, emphasising the urgent need for effective interventions.
Alarmed with these grim statistics, Mborchie, who was speaking in an interview with The Chronicle, advocated for a shift in approach, emphasising the effectiveness of visual communication.
The Benkum SHS tutor believed that visuals are easily understood and take a strong position in the mind more than words hence the need for a more impactful means of conveying road safety messages.
“A lot of public education on road safety has been going on but it seems road crashes continue to rise killing thousands of people yearly and maiming many others, affecting lots of families and deepening poverty”, he said.
To him, using Visuals Arts to communicate road safety is something that could go a long way to help bring the alarming situation to a considerable limit if not a final solution to the canker.
He has, therefore, affirmed his commitment and readiness to galvanize support to create more drawings and paintings on road safety, to erect them on the shoulders of major roads and lorry terminals across the country.
“As an artist, I believe in the power of drawings so my vision this year is to get support to buy materials needed to do more drawings and paintings to be erected on major roads and lorry stations”
He believes this intervention will help Ghana meet target 3.6 of the sustainable development goals (SDG), which enjoins countries to halve the number of deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents by 2030.
Display of some work of Mr. Bismark Mborchie
Bismark Mborchie, a Science student turned Artist, followed his passion to pursue a Bachelor’s Degree in Arts and Education, with a specialiSation in painting at the University of Education in 2015.
The impact of Mborchie’s dedication to visual arts education extends beyond road safety.
The Benkum SHS Visual Art Department has transformed into an exhibition center, showcasing beautiful paintings on various themes, including climate change, water protection, community harmony, and depictions of popular Ghanaians.
Looking to the future, Mborchie aspires to secure a platform to showcase these works globally, placing them on the international stage of arts.
