Author: newsfilegh

In an effort to up its signal to noise ratio, Facebook may go local. The company is testing a new area of its app called “Today In,” a mix of city-specific events, announcements and local news. For its new local hub, Facebook is starting with a small batch of test markets. Those initial cities are New Orleans, Louisiana; Olympia, Washington; Billings, Montana; Binghamton, New York; Peoria, Illinois and Little Rock, Arkansas. Users in test markets will be able to access the feature through the bottom-right menu button (the three horizontal lines) in the core Facebook app. Facebook’s News Partnerships team is spearheading the experiment,…

Some 74 per cent of Ghanaians are calling for the appointment of an independent and courageous prosecutor to call shots at the Office of the Special Prosecutor. This was contained in a survey conducted by the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana. The survey, which was conducted with a sample size of 5,000 respondents from 250 electoral areas covered some 50 constituencies across the country with a focus on the first year of the NPP administration. Sixty-four per cent of the respondents lauded government for creating the Special Prosecutor’s office with 41.4 per cent of the view that…

In a betrayal of loyalty signaling poor morale, a massive dump of Snapchat’s usage stats has leaked. The most worrisome is that the number of users posting Stories has shown zero growth, an even worse performance than Snapchat’s total user growth that was sluggish this year. It appears Instagram’s Stories clone has stopped Snapchat’s most monetizable feature dead in its tracks. This explains why Snapchat’s redesign moves friends Stories into the chat inbox, since visual messaging on the app is growing slightly faster than total users. Messaging is tough to interrupt with ads without being annoying, so combining messages and Stories might be Snap’s best shot…

Samsung just confirmed what we’ve been suspecting for a few weeks, that its next flagship smartphone will be unveiled in Barcelona, Spain, rather than Las Vegas. Early Galaxy S9 rumors said that Samsung planned to unveil the phone at CES 2018, but as we got closer to the trade show, other reports said that Samsung changed its mind. Apparently, the iPhone X isn’t as scary as Samsung first thought, so the company supposedly fell back to the original launch schedule for the handset. That meant the Galaxy S9 would be unveiled at MWC in late February, nearly two months later…

Sri Lanka is to allow women over the age of 18 to buy alcohol legally for the first time in more than 60 years. The government said that it was amending a 1955 law that it agreed was discriminatory against women. The amendment to the law, announced on Wednesday, also means that women will be permitted without prior approval to work in places that sell alcohol. While the previous law was not always strictly enforced, many Sri Lankan women have welcomed the change. Women took to social media to thank the government for its decision, which was announced by Sri…

Sri Lanka is to allow women over the age of 18 to buy alcohol legally for the first time in more than 60 years. The government said that it was amending a 1955 law that it agreed was discriminatory against women. The amendment to the law, announced on Wednesday, also means that women will be permitted without prior approval to work in places that sell alcohol. While the previous law was not always strictly enforced, many Sri Lankan women have welcomed the change. Women took to social media to thank the government for its decision, which was announced by Sri…

A fifth suspect has been arrested in a 7-member gang-rape scandal that rocked Bantama in the Ashanti region in December last year.   Seven male teenagers were caught on a widely circulated video sexually assaulting a girl. The five suspects arrested by the police are currently facing trial at a juvenile court in Kumasi. When the suspects appeared in court on Wednesday, 10th January 2018, they were remanded again in a juvenile cell. They will reappear in court on January 17, 2018. Lawyer for the juveniles, John Boamah, confirmed the arrest of the fifth person who arrived in court in…

From my engagement with several personalities within the fashion space across the continent, it appears fashion designing is a profession that tends to attract people at an early age. However, there are several elements of the profession and knowledge to be acquired about the trade which will lead a person to having a successful career in the field. To be a fashion designer, particularly a successful fashion designer, there are a lot of things to do in addition to just having a good eye for color and shape or drawing skills. You will need to consolidate many skills like pattern…

The New Patriotic Party has set up a 3-man committee to look into recent comments made by suspended General Secretary, Kwabena Agyapong. Kwabena Agyapong was suspended by the party in 2015, together with then National Chairman, Paul Afoko and Vice chairman, Sammy Crabbe. The suspensions followed a series of petitions  brought forth by some NPP members who accused the officials of engaging in actions that undermined the party’s political fortunes. Kwabena Agyapong, unlike, Mr. Afoko and Sammy Crabbe, did not challenge the decision in court. But recently, in separate media interviews, he has questioned the resolution by the NPP’s National Executive…

Ghanaian poultry farmers claim they recorded a loss over the Christmas season, pointing to many of their colleagues going bankrupt soon. This was revealed at the Poultry Farmers Association’s annual conference held after the Christmas festivities in Kumasi in the Ashanti region on Monday. Before 2017 Christmas, many of the poultry farmers had high expectation to record relatively high sales as they unanimously agreed to beat down prices to entice Ghanaians to patronize their produce. Several occasions on Connect FM, Napoleon Agyeman Oduro, vice president of the National Poultry Farmers Association drummed home how the industry was faced with high…