Some Africans in the Diaspora said on Friday that the myth surrounding the Atlantic Slave Trade had been broken and things made clear to them, when they toured slave trade sites in Salaga in the East Gonja District. The tour which formed part of activities marking this year's Emancipation Day took them to a slave bathing place (Wankanbayi) along a stream in the North-eastern part of Salaga where the slaves dug more than one hundred wells from which they drew water for bathing before they were sent to slave markets.

The National Commission on Culture has embarked on a programme to develop a website to market Ghanaian culture. Professor George Hagan, Chairman of the Commission, who announced this at the opening of the 14th Annual Pan African Association of Anthropologists Conference, said the Commission had developed a policy on culture, which, if approved by the Cabinet, could become a useful tool to inform society and help in nation-building.

The services of 408 doctors trained at a cost of 24.4 million dollars are likely to be lost by 2006 if the present trend of brain drain among the country's health professionals continued unchecked. Within the same period, it is projected that 591 pharmacists and 1,883 nurses would join the bandwagon of medical professionals leaving the country.

A total of 1,465 out of the 2,000 registered non-government organisations (NGOs) in the country have failed to submit annual reports to the Ministry of Manpower Development and Employment since 2003. Consequently, the Ministry has threatened to withdraw its recognition from the defaulting NGOs and to recommend that they be denied exemption from paying duty on goods they import for their activities.

The School Management Committee (SMC) of Akuapim basic schools has condemned the increasing rate at which parents allow school children to cart cocoa beans and food crops from one place to the other and tap palm wine instead of encouraging them to stay in school.

Ghana lags behind most of Africa when it comes to using insecticide-treated malaria nets and the government needs to go on an offensive to promote them, the head of the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said last Thursday. Just three percent of the Ghanaian population string up the treated nets over their beds, whereas the average in most African countries is between 25 and 40 percent.

The campaign trail for Ghana’s general election in December is taking a detour through South Africa this week, with the visit of opposition leader John Evans Atta Mills. Addressing journalists in the country’s commercial centre of Johannesburg Tuesday, Aug. 3, the head of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) sounded upbeat about his prospects in the poll.

This book of poetry by established and younger writers from Ghana represents a rare effort to compile and publish an anthology of contemporary Ghanaian poems. Some of the writers included are Kobena Eyi Acquah, Ama Ata Aidoo, Kofi Awoonor, Kwesi Brew, Gifty Selorn Odoom, Doris Adabasu Kuwornu, Rex Quarterly and Lade Wosornu.

Ghanaweb have announced that they will be broadcasting Ghanafest 2004 live on the Internet on July 31st. The festival is the largest African cultural event in North America and is being held in Washington Park, Chicago.

In the presence of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and other African leaders, Cote d'Ivoire's president, opposition and rebels will sit down today in the Ghanaian capital Accra to try to break a political deadlock and end what Ivorians call "no war, no peace". But ahead of the talks, billed by President Laurent Gbagbo as "the last meeting", the rival factions are maintaining their respective positions. Gbagbo's ruling party says the starting point is for rebels to disarm and the rebels are calling for parliament to first pass political reforms.

This month the Ghanaian government launched a US$1.5 million war on the 270 tonnes of plastic waste generated each day by the capital's three million inhabitants. Officials estimate that plastic water sachets account for about 85 percent of that refuse.

After 18 months, in which it has listened to more than 2,000 accounts of human rights violations, Ghana's National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) has concluded its public hearings. The NRC has the investigative powers of a high court but cannot bring charges against individuals. Instead it aims to establish an accurate, complete and historical record of human rights violations inflicted by people linked to the state and then make recommendations for redress to prevent abuses happening again. Former President, Jerry Rawlings, was amongst the witnesses called to the NPC.

Some of the most difficult human rights violations to address are customary or traditional practices based on deep-seated beliefs of a community or people, particularly practices that have a spiritual dimension. In the Trokosi system in Ghana, women and virgin girls are taken without their consent to fetish shrines to atone for sins or alleged crimes committed by family members. The practice occurs mainly in remote areas of the Volta Region of Ghana, which is dominated by an ethnic group called the Ewes. A coalition effort involving the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ, a constitutional and statutory body), International Needs Ghana (ING, an NGO), the National Commission on Civic Education (another constitutional body), and the traditional leaders from the Ewe communities, have succeeded in liberating thousands of young women and girls held in this bondage.

The National Council of Ghanaian Associations (NCOGA) has announced that 'the Mother of all Picnics' will take place on 7th August at Croton-On-Hudson Park in New York. The event is being held in conjunction with Ghana Airways and Western Union and is the largest gathering of Ghanaians anywhere in the world. NCOGA invites Ghanaians and all friends of Ghana to this event which they promise will be better than ever, featuring such events as 'Ghanaian Idol' and the popular Ghanaian show, 'Agoro', hosted by kofi Dontoh.

In recognition of his significant contribution to the image of Ghana in the UK, Mr Isaac Osei, Ghana's High Commissioner to the UK, was presented with the 2004 'Person of the Year' award at the 4th Ghana Professional Achievers Awards (GPA) ceremony in London. The awards scheme exists to honour exceptional performers in various enterprises in a bid to further excellence in the Ghanaian and African Communities.

Formal education rarely reaches pastoral communities. Schools usually promote the values and practices of dominant cultures and do not prioritise the needs of marginalised populations. In African states with significant numbers of pastoral and other nomadic groups, there are calls for education to cater for this sector - on political, environmental, economic and health-related grounds. There is considerable pressure for pastoral education to be institutionalised but could there be a non-formal and community-based alternative?

The Ghana National Council of Metropolitan Chicago has announced the date for this year's Ghanafest as Saturday 31st July, in the city's Washington Park. This Cultural Exposition, featuring the Traditional Ghanaian Thanksgiving Celebration and music bands from the area, also embraces other cultures with a soccer tournament between 20 African and Caribbean Teams.

Ghana is traditionally known as a hospitable country and, has throughout its post-independence era from 1957 periodically hosted thousands of people who are either fleeing famine or war. Since 1990, however, Ghana has experienced one of the most sustained and largest refugee inflows as a result of the multiple conflicts occurring in the West Africa sub-region. The largest of these groups are the Liberians, whose horrific war experiences during their 8 years civil war from 1989 to 1997 initially resulted in their sojourn to Ghana. Although Liberian refugees have been domiciled in Ghana for over ten years, there is a huge scholarly gap and disparity in the quality of the knowledge base concerning refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in general and the survival strategies and coping mechanisms in particular in Ghana.

The village of Nyenasi is like most villages in Ghana; there is no electricity, library, post office, or telephone service, the major sources of information are the interactions on market days at the district capital Twifo Praso, and on portable radio sets which run on dry cell batteries. It is such communities that many development experts want to reach with ICTs.

The success of the anti-corruption crusade in Ghana depended on peoples' willingness to question the actions of people in authority at all levels. Mrs Hilary Gbedemah, Senior Legal Advisor of the Women In Law and Development in Africa (WILDAF), made the point at a public forum on how to deal with corruption in Ghana.