Last Updated- Jan 31, 2010 18:13 - - 2 Comments


Ghana Black Stars fail to win Angola 2010, but impress

The African Nations Cup, Angola 2010 is over. And the winner is Egypt.

The Ghana Black Stars after playing their best game so far in Angola succumbed to a last minute onslaught from the Egyptians who are also the reigning African champions, and fell by a lone goal from substitute, Gedo in the 85th minute.

Until the goal, there was no clear sign of which team would win, as both teams played cautiously.

Ghana’s young, inexperienced but talented youngsters played a more cohesive, organized game than in all the other matches, creating some chances but failing to score.

This victory makes the Egyptians win the African Nations Cup thrice in a row and that also makes them seven times winners of the cup.

Some Ghanaians are heartbroken, and disappointed, but proud of their Stars.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi


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Quintessentially launches in Ghana

Quintessentially (UK) Limited, the world’s leading private members’ club providing a 24-hour global concierge services, has formally launched its operations in Ghana. This follows its successful registration in Ghana in December last year under the name Quintessentially Ghana Limited.

With the launch, Quintessentially Ghana Ltd opens membership subscriptions to interested persons to enable them enjoy a collection of the best luxury services that life has to offer be it opera, travel, music, art, food, drink, hotels, clubs, spas, restaurants. Launching it at a champagne breakfast in Accra at the weekend on Saturday, Ms Sylvia Yamson, Chief Executive of Quintessentially (UK) Limited, said the company’s mission is to bring the very best of services to satisfy the needs of members.

Ms Yamson said to enjoy the services, one had to register as a member with the company and notify it about his or her programmes in terms of travels, parties or VIP events to attend, hotels or spas to lodge in, shopping needs as well as restaurants and clubs and the company would make all the necessary arrangements for the individual to enjoy those facilities wherever in the world.

She said the company had offices in almost every major destination and had thousands of suppliers worldwide adding that “no matter where you are in the world, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, Quintessentially is here to help with all your needs, however extraordinary or difficult they may be”.

She said in Ghana, Quintessentially is partnering with Fairlop International Limited, sole marketers of Jaguar vehicles to deliver the best for members. She noted that the Jaguar brand is a sign of excellence which is the core value and standard of Quintessentially’s brand.

She said Quintessentially, through its services, offered value for money by saving costs for its members adding that “we can not only solve some of your most pressing practical problems (where to find presents in a hurry, a good nanny, the best gym in town) and save you money, we can also help you make the most of your precious time”.

She said Quintessentially helped arrange for preferred seating at events for members adding “from front row seats at fashion shows to spur-of-the-moment chartered yachts, impossible-to-book theatre tickets, dinner reservations, film premieres, charity galas and VIP after-parties. You name it, Quintessentially can certainly sort it for you”.

Ms Yamson assured members and potential members saying “as we enter 2010, expect delights, surprises and a whole range of treats. Whatever your interests may be, do not let time stand still. Instead, embrace all that life has to offer – whether it’s a trip to the Sabi Sands, or an experience in the Western destinations, Quintessentially will arrange it for you”.

Mr Harry Ofei-Sah, Sales and Marketing Manager of Fairlop International Limited said the company is happy with the relationship it had with the Quintessentially brand adding it exposed its range of vehicles including Jaguar XF to a wider market. The Quintessentially brand has been in existence for 10 years now and has over 10,000 members across the globe.

Source: GNA


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Ghana Rubber to help local communities set up rubber farms

The Ghana Rubber Estates Limited (GREL) is to assist communities in its areas of operation to establish rubber farms to enable them generate income for development.

Mr Marc Genot, the Managing Director of the company announced this on Saturday at the 4th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Association of Chiefs on Whose Lands GREL Operates (ACLANGO) at Agona Nkwanta.

He said GREL would supply the communities with free rubber seedlings and the project would be undertaken in collaboration with the ACLANGO.

Mr Genot said the communities are to secure lands for the farms, clear the lands for cultivation and obtain proper documentation for the projects.

He said the company has installed a treatment plant to control odour from the processing of rubber in response to complaints from communities around its factory near Agona Nkwanta.

Mr Genot spoke of the good relations between the company and communities in its catchment area adding through the initiative of ACLANGO, some thorny issues with the communities were amicably resolved.

Awulae Agyefi Kwame II, Chairman of ACLANGO and Omanhene of Nsein Traditional Area, commended GREL for rolling out such a plan to assist communities.

He advised the communities to meet with their chiefs on the release of lands before starting their farms to forestall litigation saying some rubber-outgrower farmers, who failed to properly secure lands, are currently facing land litigation problems.

Awulae Kwame II also urged the chiefs not to give out lands indiscriminately to the detriment of other developmental needs.

He said the Association was not formed to fight GREL but rather to complement efforts to development the area.

Awulae Kwame II asked traditional leaders in the Western Region that have links with GREL to be circumspect. He also asked them to abhorred violence in their dealings with the company and urged Association members to channel their grievances about the company to the leaders for redress.

Source: GNA


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People with autoimmune disease require National Health Insurance

People suffering from autoimmune disease on Saturday requested government to give clear procedures about how they could benefit from the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

At a forum that gave the patients a platform to share their experiences, most of the sufferers said it was difficult getting the right diagnoses early, which also resulted in high medical cost.

Autoimmune diseases are diseases, which causes the antibodies in humans to attack the cells instead of fighting external diseases. Autoimmune diseases usually cause disability in the sufferer.

The forum was organized by Sharecare Ghana, a civil society organization that acts as a support group for people with neuro-immunological diseases in Ghana.

Dr Augustina Charway, a neurologist at the 37 Military Hospital, explained to the patients that the first step to getting the right treatment was for a primary health care giver or a General Practitioner in any hospital to refer patients to a neurologist.

“However, there is very little awareness about autoimmune diseases and sometimes primary health care givers are even not able to identify the disease over a long period of time,” she added.

Dr Charway advised people to visit the hospital whenever they felt unexplained numbness or weaknesses in certain parts of their body and mentioned that the actual cause of autoimmune diseases had not been found but some could be heredity.

Some members of Sharecare Ghana also pointed out that the real difficulty for them was how to get the right doctors and the early diagnoses.

They therefore urged government to pay attention to such diseases under the NHIS.

Mr Duut Abdulai, Executive Secretary of the National Council of People with Disability, added his voice to the call for government to pay attention to people with disabilities.

He said when issues of disability are mainstreamed into the development programmes of the country it facilitate development.

Nana Yaa Agyeman, Founder of Sharecare Ghana, said the organization is registering members, who are unable to work with the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme to enable them earn something to support themselves.

The LEAP is a poverty reduction programme by government.

She said the organization would continue to lobby for the National Health Insurance Scheme in Ghana to cover all diseases.

Miss Mimi Areme, Miss Ghana 2009, who also attended the meeting, said she would embark on an educational campaign to encourage the showing of care and love to the disabled.

Miss Ghana has one of her projects to advocate for people suffering from autoimmune diseases.

Source: GNA


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Will Ghanaians jubilate after Angola 2010 finals with Egypt?

Children jubilating after the semi-final match against Nigeria

Last Thursday January 28, 2010 when Ghana beat Nigeria to reach the finals of the African Nations Cup tournament in Angola, the streets of Ghana’s major cities and towns were filled by jubilant Ghanaians including children celebrating the feat.

Will Ghanaians celebrate tonight after the game? When the whistle is blown for the end of the final game of the tournament?

Expectations are high in Ghana for victory as the national team, the Black Stars play the Pharaohs of Egypt in the finals of the 2010 African Nations Cup in Angola.

If Ghana wins, it will be the first time in the last 18 years that the team reached the finals of the continent’s most prestigious competition and won – making it the fifth time for Ghana.

Ghanaians least expected their team to make it to the finals, because the team has been ravaged and depleted by injury. All the key players in the team, Michael Essien, John Paintsil, John Mensah, Captain Stephen Appiah, Laryea Kingston are on the injury list, while Sulley Muntari is on suspension for indiscipline.

With a sheer sense of cautious optimism and hope Coach Milovan Rajevac selected mostly members of Ghana’s under-20 team, the Satellites to build a team to compete in the second most popular football tournament in the world after the world cup. Most of these young and inexperienced players were playing in the African Nations Cup for the first time against more experienced teams.

Apart from Andre Ayew and Agyeman Badu, the others like Agyeman Opoku, Kwadwo Asamoah, Isaac Vorsah and Inkoom were new comers.

To make matters worse for Ghanaians, the team lost its opening match against a well organized, more experienced Ivory Coast team. The team went down by three goals to one.

But the coach and players were hopeful, they reorganized themselves after the loss and in a game against a more matured and improved Burkina Faso, the team braced all the odds and won by a lone goal to keep hope alive and move on to the quarter-finals against highly motivated host team Angola. With the entire country, including their president behind them, the Angolans looked better positioned to beat the Stars, but it didn’t happen. The Stars beat all the odds again to sail into the semi-finals with a one goal win over Angola setting the team up for a clash against their arch-rivals, the Super Eagles of Nigeria.

The Nigerians were intent on revenge as they have lost almost all matches between the two teams in recent history. Not many Ghanaians thought the Stars could beat the Eagles, but yet still they were hopeful.  And the Stars did not disappoint, they beat the Nigerians to sail into the finals crushing all hopes that Nigeria had for revenge.

Set against a more tactical, organized and highly motivated Egyptian side, hoping to win the cup for a historical seventh time, the Stars would be playing probably, their match of the tournament and it would be their match of destiny and Ghanaians are waiting with baited breath, and hope of another jubilation.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi


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Shell sells stake in Nigeria oil licenses

Royal Dutch Shell said on Friday it has agreed to sell its 30 percent stake in three Nigerian oil production licenses to a consortium consisting of two Nigerian firms and France’s Maurel & Prom.

“This sale of assets supports the Nigerian government’s goal of expanding opportunities for local energy companies,” said Mutiu Sunmonu, managing director of Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria.

The oil mining leases 4, 38 and 41 are located in the northwestern part of the Niger Delta and include 30 wells with a production capacity of around 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Source: Reuters


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GlaxoSmithKline to cut up to 4,000 jobs

British pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline is to cut up to 4,000 more jobs as it restructures its workforce and focuses increasingly on emerging markets, The Sunday Times reported.

The majority of the jobs will be lost in the United States and Europe, the newspaper said.

GSK, which employs just under 100,000 staff globally, is expected to reveal plans for the job cuts when it releases its annual results on Thursday, the report said.

Its Anglo-Swedish rival AstraZeneca announced on Thursday it plans to axe 8,000 more jobs worldwide by 2014, extending a cost-cutting drive despite soaring profits.

While GSK is still seeking to develop new drugs, it is increasingly turning to emerging markets to find growth.

This led to it recently cutting 2,000 sales jobs in the United States while adding 1,500 staff in China.

The big players in the global pharmaceuticals industry are seeing their profits squeezed as they reduce their reliance on top-selling blockbuster drugs, many of whose patents will soon expire.

Source: AFP


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Bill Gates pledges $10b for vaccines

Bill Gates

Bill and Melinda Gates said on Friday they would spend $10 billion over the next decade to develop and deliver vaccines, an increased commitment that reflects progress in the pipeline of products for immunizing children in the developing world.

Over the past 10 years, the Microsoft co-founder’s charity has committed $4.5 billion to vaccines and has been instrumental in establishing the GAVI alliance, a public-private partnership that channels money for vaccines in poor countries.

By increasing immunization coverage in developing countries to 90 percent, it should be possible to prevent the deaths of 7.6 million children under five between 2010 and 2019, Gates told reporters at the World Economic Forum.

Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization described Gates’ commitment to vaccines as “unprecedented” and called on governments around the world and the private sector to match it with “unprecedented action.”

Vaccination rates have already climbed remarkably in recent years, with even a poor African country like Malawi now boasting coverage rates similar to those in many Western cities.

“Over the last 10 years, the success of both increased vaccine coverage and getting new vaccines out has been phenomenal,” Gates said.

More cash is now needed to make the most of new vaccines becoming available, including ones against severe diarrhea and pneumococcal disease from GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Pfizer.

“We can take immunization to the next level, with the expanded uptake of new vaccines against major killers such as pneumonia and rotavirus diarrhea,” Chan said in a statement.

She said an extra two million deaths in children under five could be prevented by 2015 by widespread use of new vaccines and a 10 percent increase in global immunization coverage.

Further off, Glaxo is also in the final phase of testing a vaccine against malaria that Gates said could slash deaths from the mosquito-borne disease.

Gates warned against the risk of governments diverting foreign aid funding for health toward climate change, arguing that health should stay a top priority — not least because better health leads to a lower birth rate.

Curbing the globe’s population growth is critical for tackling global warming.

Source: Reuters


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U.S. bank bailout said to encourage risky behavior

Timothy Geithner - US Treasury Secretary

The U.S. taxpayer-funded rescue program set up to save banks from collapse during the financial crisis makes future reckless behavior more likely, the government’s bailout watchdog said in a quarterly report.

A quarterly report to Congress on the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, made available in draft form late on Saturday, said financial firms seen as too big to fail before 2008 have only grown larger as they feasted on subsidies from the bailout program.

“To the extent that institutions were previously incentivized to take reckless risks through a ‘heads I win, tails the government will bail me out’ mentality, the market is more convinced than ever that the government will step in as necessary to save systemically significant institutions,” the report from the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, said.

The office, headed by Neil Barofsky, acts as a watchdog for taxpayers over how TARP money the Treasury Department administers is used.

The report said little has been achieved in terms of correcting underlying problems that helped create the financial crisis.

“Even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car,” it warned.

The report noted that TARP, which was originally pitched to Congress as a way to help banks by buying toxic or unwanted assets and then, when Congress approved it, turned into a plan for injecting capital into banks, is changing again.

“Treasury has stated that, going forward, TARP will focus on foreclosure mitigation efforts, small-business lending, and a continuation of support for the asset-backed securities markets,” the report said.

With some banks already repaying TARP capital, it appears that taxpayers’ ultimate costs may be less than initially feared but many of the program’s goals are not being met.

The report noted, for example, that while TARP was supposed to encourage banks to increase financing for U.S. businesses and consumers, lending is actually decreasing on a month-by-month basis.

While preserving homeownership and promoting jobs were “explicit purposes” of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 that enabled TARP, the unemployment rate remains at 10 percent and only a small fraction of troubled mortgages have been permanently modified to lower borrowers’ monthly payments.

The report suggested that Treasury’s ability to wring concessions from banks that benefited from bailout money was rapidly disappearing just when consumers and businesses need increased access to credit and relief on mortgage loans.

“To the extent that the government had leverage through its status as a significant preferred shareholder to influence the largest TARP recipients to carry out such policy goals, it was lost with their exit from TARP,” the report said.

Source: Reuters


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Ghana, EU in first timber agreement review meeting

Ghana and the European Union (EU) have held the first monitoring and review meeting to look at the impact of the timber pact, the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) the two signed on timber trade.

The Daily Graphic reports that the agenda for the meeting included Rules of the procedure; Ghana and EU synopsis of progress since initialing; Plan of action for 2010; Aide memoir and to fix a date for the next review meeting.

Ghana signed a voluntary partnership agreement with the European Union on November 20, 2009 in Brussels, making Ghana the first country to sign a voluntary agreement with the EU. Nana Bema Kumi, Ghana’s Head of Mission to the EU signed on behalf of the country while Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas and Swedish Agriculture Minister Eskil Erlandsson signed on behalf of the EU Presidency.  See this story.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi


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