More students qualify for senior secondary
'Student's death was accidental'
Prison rejects accused
Baby injected with acid
Bees cut off water source
More students qualify for senior secondary
The weekend edition of the Daily Graphic reports that one hundred and forty-nine thousand, six hundred and eleven, out of the 247,699 candidates who sat for the 2001 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), have qualified to enter senior secondary schools.
They scored between aggregates six and 30, representing 60.4 per cent of the total performance, Rev J.A. Adotey, Head, Test and Administration of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), is reported to have disclosed in an interview with the paper on Friday.
He said the results show a consistent improvement in students' performance over the past years.
The performance of the students improve every year, Rev Adotey said, and attributed it to what he described as "a general realisation of the importance of education".
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More students qualify for senior secondary
'Student's death was accidental'
Police investigations have established that Corporal Twumasi Appiah did not deliberately shoot at the Accra Polytechnic students, Joseph Yaw Avonor, last Thursday.
According to the Saturday’s issue of the Daily Graphic, investigations revealed that Yaw Avonor, 27, was only playing the 'good Samaritan' when the gun accidentally went off and killed him.
The investigations said the policeman's rifle went off while the student was trying to separate a scuffle between the policemen and a driver.
Inspector Kwame Tawiah of the Police Public Relations Directorate said in an interview with the paper on Friday that a report from the Accra West Divisional Command submitted to the Police Administration on Friday indicated that on August 16, 2001 at about 3p.m., Corporal Appiah was on foot patrol duties around the Akokofoto area at Dansoman when he allegedly saw the door of a moving cab open.
While he was telling the driver of the taxi not to do such a thing, one Kwame Atitsogbe, alias Sly, who claimed to be a driver, alighted from the taxi to confront the policeman.
He said in the course of the exchanges between Corporal Appiah and Sly, the deceased, who got to the scene, decided to admonish the two persons to stop.
According to Inspector Tawiah, the report said it was in the process of the encounter that the gun went off, hitting Avonor who died while he was being taken to hospital.
Sources close to the decease family, however, insist that the policeman's action was premeditated.
They have, therefore, called for a full-scale investigation into the case.
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Prison rejects accused
Two prison officers last Thursday, dumped an accused person on a Community Tribunal at Sunyani, asking that he should be granted bail, reports the Saturday’s edition of the Ghanaian Times.
The accused, Kwadwo Wam, 55, had been on prison remand for the past five years, charged with murder.
The warders walked briskly into the courtroom, one of them carrying the accused on his back, and left him on the floor. They earnestly pleaded with the tribunal to grant him bail, saying they could not keep him any longer.
Their reason, Wam's condition is fast deteriorating. He cannot walk properly: he even had to struggle to get up from the floor of the courtroom.
The tribunal chairman, faced with this situation, had to grant their request. He granted Wam bail in the sum of ˘20 million with two sureties until September 26.
Wam provisionally charged with murder, was first put before a Sunyani court on August 26, 1996.
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Baby injected with acid
To ensure that he was not saddled with the upbringing of a six-month old baby he had fathered, George Koffie, a shoemaker, methodically planned the baby's elimination, by administering a fatal injection to it, using acid, writes The Spectator, a weekend paper published by the New Times Corporation, Publishers of the Ghanaian Times.
Koffie was said to have committed the offence when the baby was asleep. He pleaded guilty and has been remanded into prison custody, by the Elmina Tribunal chaired by Anthony Agbezin. He will appear again on Wednesday, August 29.
The Prosecution’s case was that the accused person was living with his wife, Efua Annor, when the marriage ended on the rocks. Prior to that his wife had told him that she was one-month-old pregnant.
When the parents of Efua realised that the accused was doing nothing about the pregnancy, they took civil action against him. Efua gave birth to a baby girl while the suit was still pending.
The court, in its effort to ascertain the truth, ordered a paternity test but the accused refused and rather planned to kill the baby.
On September 2000, at about 9 p.m., the accused person invited his wife with her baby to his house and informed her of his father's decision to reconcile them. While they were still conversing, the baby and the mother fell asleep.
The wife later heard the baby crying and woke up, but the baby was nowhere to be found.
She went out of the room only to find the accused with the baby behind the building and when she demanded the reason for the baby's cry, the accused said that he was feeding the baby when some of the hot tea poured on her.
The wife took the baby from the accused and found out that part of the baby's stomach was burnt.
She rushed the baby to the Elmina-Health Centre, after Koffie had ignored her request for the baby to be taken to the hospital. The baby was referred to the Central Regional Hospital due to the seriousness of the burn but died shortly after admission on September 11, 2000.
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Bees cut off water source
For years, the people of Monkra, in the Krachi District of the Volta Region, lived in harmony with the bees in the forests around their village.
According the Mirror, however, for some inexplicable reasons, the two parties have parted ways and the bees have encroached upon the only source of water supply to the people.
The bees, in large swarms, have taken over the 150-year old well, which is located half a kilometer away in the forest, and are multiplying rapidly.
The insects now attack and chase away their human neighbours who compete with them for water at the well.
As a precaution, women who go to fetch water from the well do not apply toiletries such as pomade or perfume, which attract the bees.
They have also learnt to draw water from the well carefully without provoking the bees, and this is usually done before sunrise, or after sunset, when the bees are inactive.
The ancient well serve as the only source of water for the bees and other creatures in the forest during the prolonged dry seasons.
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