THE JFT EDIT

Brunei is introducing strict new Islamic laws that make sex between men an offence punishable by stoning to death.

The new measures, that come into force on Wednesday, also cover a range of other crimes including punishment for theft by amputation. The move has sparked international condemnation.  The sultan of the small south-east Asian nation on Wednesday called for “stronger” Islamic teachings.

“I want to see Islamic teachings in this country grow stronger,” Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah said at a public address, according to AFP news agency, without mentioning the new laws.  Brunei’s gay community has expressed shock and fear at the “medieval punishments”.

“You wake up and realise that your neighbours, your family or even that nice old lady that sells prawn fritters by the side of the road doesn’t think you’re human, or is okay with stoning,” one Bruneian gay man, who did not want to be identified, told the BBC.

//SC//BBC//

Jussie Smollett has walked free after one of the most eventful and unpredictable news stories of the year so far.

The Empire actor was accused of faking an assault against him, after reporting an attack by two men in January 2019. He consistently denied the allegation.

Jussie claimed that he had a rope put around his neck and had an unknown substance splashed on his face by two men using pro-Donald Trump slogans.

The charges have been dropped but that doesn’t mean we know what happened.

• How the Jussie Smollett drama unfolded

Here are five big questions you might still have about what really happened in that CCTV blind spot in Chicago earlier this year.

Did he do it?

We still don’t know. Jussie Smollett was not found guilty of faking the attack, but neither was he proven innocent.  That fact that prosecutors dropped the charges without sharing the reasons why means that people have no clearer knowledge about what happened. Jussie’s fans have been celebrating the result as proof of his innocence, however.

What has happened with his role on Empire?

In February, after the incident, there were reports that Jussie’s scenes were cut from upcoming episodes of Empire. Earlier this month Lee Daniels, the show’s creator, said that he and the show’s cast has experienced “pain and anger and sadness and frustration” due to the allegations.

But since the charges were dismissed, both the official Empire Twitter account and the account for the show’s writers have voiced their support for the actor.

//SC//BBC//

In January, she became the first solo woman to win the Grammy Award for best rap album

In January, she became the first solo woman to win the Grammy Award for best rap album.

Cardi B has defended herself after a video resurfaced of her saying she drugged and robbed men who wanted to have sex with her while she worked as a stripper before finding fame.

The rapper faced criticism after the three-year-old Instagram live video recirculated on social media.  “Whether or not they were poor choices at the time, I did what I had to do to survive,” she wrote on Tuesday.  “I never claimed to be perfect or come from a perfect world.”

The original video was made as her career was starting to take off and was her response to someone who said she didn’t deserve success because she hadn’t put in any work. “Nothing was handed to me. Nothing,” she said in the video, before going on to reveal that she would invite men to a hotel before drugging and robbing them. In response to the furore, she wrote on Instagram that she had been talking “about things in my past right or wrong that I felt I needed to do to make a living”.

She added: “I’m a part of a hip-hop culture where you can talk about where you come from, talk about the wrong things you had to do to get where you are.”

‘I had very limited options’

The Grammy-winner also pointed out that there are rappers who “glorify murder, violence, drugs and robbing”.

She wrote: “I never glorified the things I brought up in that live , I never even put those things in my music because I’m not proud of it and feel a responsibility not to glorify it.

“I made the choices that I did at the time because I had very limited options.”

Cardi B ended the statement by explaining the men she referred to in the old video were men she dated or was involved with, and were “conscious, willing and aware”.

Earlier in the week, the hashtag #Surviving CardiB was trending – a reference to Surviving R Kelly, the documentary that highlighted the years of sexual allegations against the star.

Some users compared the rapper to disgraced comedian Bill Cosby, who was sentenced to jail in 2018 after being accused of drugging and assaulting women

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Ghana’s Next Super Model 2019 , Ama Amponsah Grace is taking Ghana far with her recent International contracts. The GNSM  queen did her major international runway show at Amsterdam,World Fashion Center. She walked for Diana Pinto at International fashion week Amsterdam 2019.

Ama Amponsah Grace was presented the promised prize of a brand new car earlier in 2019. This presentation was done at a dinner party organized by Sparkzuta following the competition which took place at Lagos Nigeria in December 2018.

In an interview with the brain behind GNSM, known as Spark Zuta, he said

“there were no sponsors last year, we pray sponsors come onboard this year for the program to change many lives”.

He added ”thanks to Jants Collection and Smile air Ghana for the unflinching support”.

Jemima Fenteng – Twum

This year’s British Book Awards is dominated by two US heavyweights: former First Lady Michelle Obama and President Donald Trump.  Obama’s memoir, Becoming, goes head to head with Michael Wolff’s White House exposé Fire and Fury in the narrative non-fiction category.

There are eight categories from which the book of the year will be chosen, with the winner announced on 13 May.  Obama’s book is also nominated in the audiobook category. The audiobook shortlist also features Anna Burns’ Milkman, which won last year’s Booker Prize and will also compete for the fiction book prize.

Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People, Waterstones’ book of 2018, is also on the fiction shortlist. Paddington star Ben Whishaw narrates another audiobook nominee, Stephen Hawking’s Brief Answers to the Big Questions.

Heather Morris’s The Tattooist of Auschwitz is up for best debut. It tells the true story of Ludwig ‘Lale’ Eisenberg, who had to tattoo serial numbers on the arms of his fellow prisoners.  David Walliams and Jacqueline Wilson feature on the children’s book shortlist, as does Tomi Adeyemi for her debut Children of Blood and Bone.

It’s the second nomination for Adeyemi in two days. The US writer was also nominated for Waterstones’ Children’s Book Prize on Thursday. But there is tough competition from Hilary McKay’s The Skylarks’ War, which won the Costa children’s book prize earlier this year.

The awards, dubbed the Nibbies, are organised by trade magazine The Bookseller. Each of the eight categories has its own judging panel. A separate panel, whose members include Labour MP Jess Phillips and Sky News’ Kay Burley, will go on to choose the overall book of the year.

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Parliament has suspended the passage of the long-awaited Right to Information (RTI) Bill into law until further notice.

The decision followed a directive by the Speaker, Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye in Accra yesterday that the third reading of the bill – the final legislative step – as advertised, was deleted from the Order Paper; the activity schedule of the House.    The third reading had featured on the Order Paper since Tuesday with assurances by the Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, that the over two-decade-old bill would be passed by close of week today.

Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu told the House on Wednesday that “the matter of policy has been sorted out” and that there was no impediment on the route to the passage of the bill.
But when Speaker Oquaye called for that motion, numbered seven on the Order Paper, during proceedings yesterday, the Deputy Majority Leader, Sarah Adwoa Safo, said the Committee on Constitutional, Parliamentary and Legal Affairs was yet to finish its work on the bill.  According to Ms Safo, the committee was still in talks with Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to iron out some clauses and that the House put on hold.

Responding to the request of the Deputy Majority Leader, Speaker Oquaye directed that the advertisement of the bill on the Order Paper seized until the consultations were concluded.

In his view, deleting the item and allowing for further consultations and “other viewpoints on this matter” will only make the bill more credible. Speaking on the issue, the Deputy Minority Chief Whip, Ibrahim Ahmed, said Parliament remained committed to the passage of the bill.  He, however, wants Ghanaians to blame the CSOs for holding back the House from passing the bill.

“The executive has done its part. This parliament, we have also done our part. But it’s the Coalition to the Right to Information…….they are saying that they don’t want it to be passed the way we have done it so they are bringing other things. “The public should understand that it is not Ghana’s Parliament that is trying not to pass the RTI but it is the public that is bringing new amendments to the work that we have done so far. Left with us alone, we have done what we should do,” he stated. Assuring of the House’s resolve to see the bill passed, Speaker Oquaye said “the Parliament of Ghana has done and will continue to do its bit” in regards to the RTI.

The RTI was up for approval at the beginning of this meeting in January but the committee asked for more time to engage CSOs on some grey areas in the bill. This means that after the consultations, if new introductions were made, the House would have to take the bill through a second consideration stage at the plenary.  Laid in March last year, the RTI Bill was first brought to Parliament in 2010 but could not be passed by the two previous Parliaments. The momentum to have it passed gathered in 2017 in the formation of coalitions to put pressure on the House after it came close to passing it in 2016.

//SC//the independent Ghana//

Ghanaian musician and television presenter, Deborah Owusu Bonsu popularly known as Sister Derby has broken her silence for the first time after her break-up with Medikal.

According to Sister Derby also known as ‘The African Mermaid’, she broke up with Medikal after she heard rumours about him cheating on her.  “There were rumors of cheating and when I found out I just left. I know people think otherwise but I left. I don’t see why I should fight for someone who is proving to be otherwise, there is no point. I saw the break up coming so I left”, she disclosed.

Sister Derby also stated that she wrote her hit song ‘Kakalika Love’ in 2018 before she broke up with Medikal. According to her, the song was not a ‘diss’ song as believed by Ghanaians but a way of telling her fans that she was no more in a relationship with Medikal.

“People assume and say it is a diss song, but as an artist, at the beginning of our relationship, I made my fans and the world know that I am dating this person.

As the break up happened its a way to also tell my fans this is the story. I can’t be a coward or hypocrite and stay silent about it. That is a way of telling my story, and there were no insults in it”, Sister Derby added.

//SC//the independence Ghana//

Former Brazilian President Michel Temer has been arrested as part of a wide-ranging corruption investigation. Mr Temer, a 78-year-old lawyer who served as president from 2016 to 2018, is being investigated in several cases.

He has consistently denied any wrongdoing. His arrest was considered imminent after he lost his legal protection when he left office. Many politicians and business leaders have been convicted or charged as part of the so-called Operation Car Wash.  Mr Temer took over the Brazilian presidency in August 2016 following the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, a process in which he played a key role. He was replaced in January by Jair Bolsonaro.

Local media say police had been trying to trace Mr Temer since Wednesday. He was arrested in his hometown of São Paulo.  Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is now serving 12 years in jail after being convicted of corruption, also as part of Operation Car Wash.

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