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ENTERTAINMENT
One Direction break chart records
One Direction have topped the UK singles chart with their new single Drag Me Down.
The track broke streaming records, earning the highest first-week streams for a single in the UK with 2.03m plays.Indie band The Maccabees have scored their first number one album with Marks To Prove It, just 1,300 copies ahead of Lianne La Havas' Blood.
Cilla Black entered the album top 40 chart following her death last weekend.
The Very Best of Cilla Black reached its highest ever chart position at number 14, while her former number one single Anyone Who Had A Heart also entered the singles chart at number 41, securing its highest chart position in 51 years.
Drag Me Down is One Direction's first single as a foursome since the departure of Zayn Malik.
Its release came a surprise to fans who had not been expecting a new single,
According to the Official Charts Company, Calvin Harris and Disciples' How Deep Is Your Love climbed from six to two and last week's number one, Black Magic by Little Mix, fell to three.
The top five was rounded off with Lost Frequencies' Are You With Me at four, and Years & Years' Shine at five.
Marks To Prove It finished the week ahead by just 1,300 combined chart sales.
"We are very proud that our fourth album has given us our first number 1," guitarist Felix White told the Official Charts Company.
The singer who resurfaced in the news for writing an apology letter to the industry last Sunday argued;
“Cann, as I talk to you, I have a show and I’m always booked. In fact, I don’t want to be playing at Teshi and conference center always. I need to feed people Tarkoradi, Sunyani, Kumasi and more. I have gigs in Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and more coming. I have so many places to go. If you call my father, he will give you the rundown of all my movement and bookings.”
Answering a question on whether he was still relevant, Shatta asked;
“If people talk about relevance, what’s relevance? I always release songs on Facebook and I record every day. Just organize a show in your neighborhood and tell people that Shatta Wale will pass through and see the crowd that will come out. I’m still relevant. It’s you and other people in the media that try to create that idea that my career is going down.”
Sarkodie takes Hiplife to the New York Times
If anybody would do it, it would be none other than Sarkodie.
Our top rapper, Sarkodie seems to be moving mountains and doing his best to put Ghana on the map musically. Reggie Rockstone also got featured on CNN for inventing “Hiplife”, way to go!
This Saturday, Sarkodie will perform in New York at the legendary Apollo Theater and he’s taking a ton of African artistes with him, like Ice Prince, Obrafour, Pappy Kojo, Banky W etc..
The event is so big, it was featured in the New York Times, the biggest media house in USA. The title alone speak volumes; Hiplife, a Sound Imported From Ghana, Arrives on a New York Stage
The New York Times said this about the show;
The Apollo is really like a test in an exciting way for the Ghanaian artists to reach out to a broader audiences and to enter into the American mainstream musical consciousness.
Renowned artistes who have performed at the Apollo Theatre include Michael Jackson among others. Congrats to Sarkodie once again for always taking the lead.
Chris Brown promoter denies defrauding Philippine Sect
Chris Brown's promoter has refuted claims he defrauded an influential religious sect in the Philippines.
John Michael Pio Roda denied receiving over $1m (£645,000) from the Iglesia ni Cristo (Church of Christ) for a 31 December concert hosted by the sect for which Brown failed to show up. Mr Roda has been held at the capital's Bureau of Immigration detention facility for nearly two weeks.
His legal counsel described his arrest as "Gestapo-like."
Brown failed to attend the show in question due to a lost passport.
Iglesia-linked local concert producers Maligaya Development Corp. have asked the justice department to file criminal fraud charges against Brown and Mr Roda, saying they had been advanced their million-dollar fee.
Mr Roda's lawyers said in a statement: "To hold Mr Pio Roda accountable for the entire one million dollars... is not only without legal or factual basis but is a travesty of justice and a continued violation of human rights."
They said Mr Roda, in fact, received $45,000 (£29,000) and that he and Brown received another $578,750 (£372,737) in advance from another company.
Brown was stopped from leaving the Philippines by the immigration bureau for three days in July over the row, having returned to play another show.
"Can somebody please tell me what... is going on? I don't know. I'm reading headline after headline," Brown said in a video that has since been removed from his Instagram account.
"I didn't do nothing," he said in a second video post, while raising both hands in the air.
He got down on his knees and begged the authorities, saying "Please, please, let us leave, please."
Although Brown was later allowed to the leave the country, the fraud complaint hearings against the R&B singer will proceed.
BUSINESS
US economy adds 215,000 jobs in July
The US economy added 215,000 jobs in July, while the unemployment rate held at a seven-year-low of 5.3%.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said job gains came in retail trade, health care, professional and technical services, and financial activities.The jobs figures are a seen as a significant gauge of the health of the economy.
Analysts said the figures meant a US interest rate rise in September remained a possibility.
Last month, the Federal Reserve upgraded its assessment of the labour market, saying it was continuing to "improve, with solid job gains and declining unemployment".
Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, said: "With the Fed's decision on the timing of the first rate rise 'data dependent', today's report does nothing to discourage the belief that a September hike is very much on the table, albeit by no means a done deal."
He said that the new hiring figures "just missed" expectations of a 225,000 rise.
"Private sector payrolls grew by a solid 210,000, just shy of an expected 215,000 rise, led by service sector hiring alongside gains in the manufacturing and construction sectors," he added.
Hourly earnings
The Bureau of Labour Statistics said that "over the year, the unemployment rate and number of unemployed people were down by 0.9 percentage point and 1.4 million".Payroll figures from May and June were revised upwards to show 14,000 more jobs created than previously reported. Also, the average working week lengthened to 34.6 hours, the highest since February.
Average hourly earnings increased by five cents, or 0.2%, after being flat in June.
The statistics office also said that the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 2.2 million.
These account for 26.9% of the unemployed.
The civilian labour force participation rate was unchanged at 62.6% in July.
Ghana Gov’t receives $53.8m to improve fishing industry
The International Development Association (IDA) is financing 50.3 million dollars, whiles the Global Environment Facility will finance 3.5 million dollars under the West Africa Region Fisheries Programme.
The project is meant to strengthen the country’s capacity to sustainably govern and manage the fisheries, reduce illegal fishing and increase the value and profitability generated by fish and aquatic resource exploitation.
The beneficiaries for the programme include an estimated 206,000 marine and Lake Volta fishers, at least 27,000 women fish processors and over 3,000 fish farmers.
Mr Godfrey Baidoo-Tsibu, head of the Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Division of the Fisheries Commission said this on Thursday in Accra in an interview with the Ghana News Agency after a panel discussion on the Ghana Journalists Association programme dubbed: “Business Advocate” on Ghana Television.
The programme which comes on weekly, is being supported by BUSAC Fund, Denmark Embassy and the United States Agency for International Development.
Speaking about the decline of the fishing industry in the country, he said the problem was necessitated by the open access people have to fishing, leading to exploitation and illegal activities.
Mr Baidoo-Tsibu said the Commission was mandated to regulate the Fishery Act 625, 2002 and had made strides in enforcing the fisheries laws and regulations, including beach combing, Sea and Volta Lake patrol operations.
He said government had gathered and analyzed intelligence data on fisheries operations, import and export, as well as post observers and inspectors on industrial vessels to ensure compliance with the Fisheries law.
Mr Baidoo-Tsubi called for effective public education on illegal fishing, stressing that the Gulf of Guinea had been identified as an endemic illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing area threatening the country’s tuna industry.
Mr Kwadwo Kyei Yamoah, Programmes Manager of Friends of the Nation, an socio-environmental advocacy NGO said the decline of the fishing industry stemmed from the fact that fishermen were chasing after little fish using unsustainable and illegal fishing methods.
He mentioned some of the methods as the use of light and dynamite for fishing which deteriorated the fish resources, without recourse to its sustainability.
He urged government to be proactive and enforce the laws governing the fishing industry as well arrest and prosecute perpetrators to serve as a deterrent to potential offenders.
Mr Kofi Agbogah, Director of Hen Mpoano, an NGO that focuses on reducing poverty and hunger by improving fisheries and aquaculture, said there was the need to empower marine police to fight illegal fishing along the coast.
He said his organisation was striving to achieve large scale, environmentally sustainable fishing and ensure access to fish at affordable prices for poor consumers in developing countries.
He called for effective dialogue for the growth of that sector since the survival of the fisheries industry was critical to the nutritional needs of Ghanaians.
Nigeria: CBN Officially Bans Foreign Currency Cash Deposits in Nigeria
The directive was contained in a circular issued by the CBN on Wednesday and signed by the director of trade and exchange, Olakanmi Gbadamosi.
The apex bank also advised those who have deposited foreign currencies into their accounts before the directive to either withdraw the cash as they will not be allowed to transfer the funds.
The circular reads in part: "The Central Bank of Nigeria has considered the recent statements by Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) concerning the large volume of foreign currencies in their vaults and the decision to stop accepting foreign currency cash deposits into customers' domiciliary accounts as a welcome development.
"Therefore, in its continued efforts to stop illicit financial flows in the Nigerian banking system which aligns with the anti-money Laundering stance of the Federal Government, the CBN hereby prohibits from the date of this circular the acceptance of foreign currency cash deposits by DMBs.
"For foreign currency cash lodgments made prior to the date of this circular, the account holder has the option to either withdraw his or her foreign currency cash or the Naira equivalent. For the avoidance of doubt, only wire transfers to and from Domiciliary Accounts are henceforth permissible.
The naira had appreciated against the dollar signifcantly after banks started denying their customers opportunity to make cash deposits of dollar, pound and euro into their domiciliary accounts.
It was also anticipated that the US dollar will further tumble against the naira at the parallel market this week as Deposit Money Banks continue to reject cash deposit of foreign currencies into customers' domiciliary accounts.
However, the naira fell N235 to US$1 in the parallel market on August 4, despite appreciating to N209 barely 24 hours earlier.
Reacting to this development, foreign exchange dealers were hopeful that the naira would still appreciate again against the dollar at the black market.
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