According to her, the situation at a number of the nation’s courts left a lot to be desired, and was not befitting of the institution.

[contextly_sidebar id=”ZaZIV0aEj56gkc90DREF9XqU4e3fTZyP”]Speaking at the 37^th Annual General Conference of the Association of Judges and Magistrates, Sophia Akufo said: “One will seriously think of closing some of these unsafe courts until we are put in a position to make them safe for use by judges on a day-to-day basis and for use by the public.”

She added that, the state of many of the courts does not portray a good picture of the judiciary, which is the third arm of government.

“I would say that some of the premises are unhygienic and they are unsuitable and unfit for use in the delivery of justice. It even tarnishes our image,” she said.

GBA concerned about working conditions

The Ghana Bar Association (GBA), in June 2017, expressed worry over the poor working and service conditions of judges.

According to the Association, judges within the country deserve more than they currently receive as conditions of service.

The GBA also complained about the lack of accommodation and proper residential and working facilities.

“As we celebrate our departed judges, as members of the legal community, it is necessary that we recommit ourselves to the entrenchment of the rule of law in our country. It cannot be sustained when the conditions of service and the working conditions of judges are nothing to write home about. Judicial independence is best secured by good conditions of service of our judges which in turn assures resilient democracies underpinned by the tenants of the rule of law,” President of the GBA, Benson Nutsukpui said on the 35th Anniversary of the murder of three high court judges.

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By: Edwin Kwakofi/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Currently, the ADR programme has been extended to 67 district and circuit courts across the country, with at least three mediators assigned to each of these courts.

[contextly_sidebar id=”tZ5n4R1nr2OK8AUdfwMgn0T0iBucbmbs”]Mrs. Irene Charity Larbie, the Judge in charge of the ADR Programme, speaking at a press conference to launch this year’s ADR Week celebration, said the ADR concept had served as a complement to the traditional court system in making access to justice cheaper, easier, expeditious, non-adversarial and faster.

The week was set aside to use the ADR to resolve cases pending in courts that were connected to the programme, and also to create mass public awareness in order to educate the citizenry on the use of the programme.

She said this had also helped in reducing the backlog of cases in the courts substantially due to the mass mediation exercise.

She said with the realization that land related cases had become dominant in the courts, the Judicial Service, in collaboration with the Land Administration Project, had trained 30 surveyors to be used as mediators on pilot bases to reduce the backlog of the cases in the land courts in the Greater Accra Region.

“A total of 295 mediators have been trained and assigned to these 67 courts connect to the ADR programme,” she said.

The Appeals Court said it clearly indicated that the ADR mechanism was a reliable partner to the traditional justice delivery system and must, therefore, be embraced and nurtured for an efficient delivery system.

Giving the background to the programme, the Judge in Charge said the ADR was piloted in some selected Districts courts in Accra and Tema between 2005 and 2007 with encouraging results.

She said the vision of the Chief Justice was to expand the court-connected ADR programme to all courts nationwide.

In pursuit of that vision, a policy directive dated June 26, 2009 established a separate National ADR Directorate to coordinate all ADR activities within the Judicial Service.

Mrs Larbie said to ensure uniformity in the practice of the ADR programme, an ADR uniform practice manual was launched in 2007 to guide practitioners which were subsequently reviewed to be in tune with the new ADR Act, 2010 (Act 798).

She said the court-connected ADR was very effective and guaranteed the interest of both parties adding that the court, at any stage of proceedings, could refer a matter to ADR and any of the parties could also request for ADR during the trial.

“The process being optional, the consent of the parties is sought before the matter is referred,” she said.

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Source: GNA

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Seventeen High Court judges have been assigned to handle anticipated electoral disputes throughout the country.

The appointed justices, according to the Judicial Secretary, Mr Justice Alex Poku-Acheampong have been tasked to handle the cases expeditiously.

He gave the breakdown of the judges assigned as follows: Greater Accra, six; Ashanti and Western, two each, while Eastern, Central, Upper West, Upper East, Northern, Volta and Brong Ahafo have been assigned a judge each.

Concerns

There are concerns that the December 7, 2016 electoral calendar could be negatively affected following the rising number of disputes between presidential aspirants and the Electoral Commission (EC), but the Judicial Secretary said there was no cause for alarm.

“These specialised courts for electoral disputes will ensure that cases are heard expeditiously and on a day-to-day basis,” Mr Poku-Acheampong said.

Disqualifications

A number of subscribers of the presidential aspirants did not meet the requirements as stipulated in the Constitutional Instrument (C.I.) 94 meant for the conduct of the elections

Some of the subscribers also sponsored more than one candidate with the same names and voter registration details.

According to the EC, they only changed their signatures.

At a press conference in Accra on Monday, October 10, 2016, the Chairperson of the EC, Mrs Charlotte Osei, disqualified 12 presidential aspirants.

They were disqualified on the grounds of forgery, perjury, impersonation and deceit of public officer.

Mrs Osei said the issue would be referred to the Ghana Police Service and the Attorney General for investigations and prosecution.

Those disqualified are Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), Mr Hassan Ayariga of the All People’s Congress (APC), Dr Edward Nasigre Mahama of the People’s National Convention (PNC) and Mr Kofi Apaloo of Independent People’s Party (IPP).

Others are Mr T.N. Ward Brew of the Democratic People’s Party (DPP), Mr Henry Lartey of the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), Richard Tetteh of the United Development Systems Party (UDSP), Akua Donkor of the Ghana Freedom Party (GFP), Nana Agyenim Boateng of the United Freedom Party (UFP) and Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings of the National Democratic Party (NDP)..

The others are Kwabena Agyei of RPD and Kwame Asiedu Walker, an independent candidate.

Only four presidential aspirants were cleared by the EC to contest Election 2016.

Dr Nduom, on October 14, 2016, filed an application for judicial review praying the High Court to quash the EC’s decision to disqualify him from contesting in the December 7, 2016 presidential election.Other aspirants, including Nana Konadu, have indicated their intention to sue the EC.

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Source: Graphic Online

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But personal intimacy doesn’t merely affect our emotional well-being. According to numerous scientific studies, the power of love directly affects our physical health, too, by boosting our immune system, improving our cardiovascular functioning, and increasing our life expectancy. “Love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well,” says Dean Ornish, M.D., who explores the connections between love and health in his book Love & Survival (HarperCollins). “When you look at the scientific data, the need for love and intimacy is as important and basic as eating, breathing, and sleeping.”

On Valentine’s Day, we celebrate our love for each other over candlelit dinners or through exchanges of chocolates, flowers, and slinky lingerie. But a box of bon-bons only lasts so long. Experts agree that the key to a vitalized, long-lasting relationship is what you and your partner do the other 364 days of the year. Indeed, keeping your love alive requires continual time and effort. Following are eight steps you can take to keep the flame burning.

1. Be Friends
Any healthy relationship must be based on a solid underlying friendship. Remember to treat your partner with the same kindness, respect, and appreciation as you would a close friend. Support, listen to, and laugh with each other. Don’t allow yourselves to be rude or disrespectful.

2. Stay Connected
“Couples need to spend a lot of time with each other,” advises David Kaplan, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Counselor Education and Rehabilitation programs at Emporia State University in Emporia, Kansas. “There is no substitute for quantity of time.” Kaplan encourages couples to take a half-day a week to go out on a date. In addition, devote at least 15 minutes of your day to meaningful, one-on-one conversation — no television or kids allowed.

3. Get Physical
Physical intimacy is a natural, and healthy, extension of a relationship. Our best sexual intentions are often put to rest, however, as we collapse into an exhausted heap at the end of the day. Instead, you and your partner need to consciously commit to turning up the heat. Leave the dishes in the sink, turn the laptop off, and just do it! Set the mood with the sensual music, and light some calming aromatherapy candles or incense. Learn to communicate your loving energy through touch.

4. Celebrate Each Other
Saying something kind and affectionate to your partner should be a daily habit. The expression of loving thoughts nourishes your relationship by helping you both remember what it is you treasure about each other. Let your partner know how much you appreciate him or her, and be generous with compliments and expressions of affection.

5. Fight Well
Since disagreements and arguments are inevitable, what’s important is not whether you fight but how you fight. When disagreements surface, keep them short. “No more than 10 minutes,” says Kaplan. “After 10 minutes, it gets nasty and repetitive.” Also, keep boundaries on the subject matter. Don’t dredge up issues from last week or last month-keep your dispute focused on the matter at hand.

6. Take a Class
Feeling like your relationship could benefit from professional advice? Why not take a class on communications skills, attend a seminar on loving kindness, or read a book on relationship-building together? Your efforts will likely spark important discussions about your relationship and, ultimately, enhance it. A good starting point is Phillip McGraw, Ph.D.’s straight-talking tome Relationship Rescue (Hyperion, 2000).

7. Listen Carefully
Being an attentive listener lets your partner know that his or her thoughts and feelings are important to you. Moreover, good listening encourages partners “to open up and be willing to share,” say Richard and Kristine Carlson, authors of Don’t Sweat the Small Things in Love (Hyperion, 1999). The secret, say the Carlsons, is not just to “hear” what your partner is saying, but to be truly “present,” having a heartfelt desire to understand what is being said and listening without being judgmental.

8. Maintain Your Sense of Self
Partners must learn to balance their needs as individuals with their needs as a couple. “On one hand, you don’t want people to be too far apart emotionally. If you don’t spend time together, you become disengaged emotionally,” says Kaplan. “The other end of the spectrum is couples that become too dependent on each other and their individual identity gets lost.” Ideally, the two of you should be close enough to have intimacy, yet “far enough away to have individual identity,” says Kaplan. Don’t be afraid to develop some friendships and interests separate from your partner.

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Source: gaiam life

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1. A sense of stability. Single life is confusing and horrifying and forces you to meet new people constantly. It’s exhausting. Dating someone long -term is warm and safe, like sleeping inside a relationship incubator.

2. Actually being able to enjoy bars. When you’re a single, straight man, bars are frightening jungles of constant peer pressure. You’re supposed to go out and get drunk and talk to women and embarrass yourself. When you’re in a stable relationship, you can just stay in one spot and watch your single friends make fools of themselves.

3. Cuddling. People can make jokes all they want about people in long-term relationships and marriages not having any sex. But first off, they’re wrong. Second, cuddling rules.

4. Having a legitimately supportive person in your life. You can have terrible friends and estranged family, but when you’re with someone for the long haul, you know it’s because they care a ton about you. It’s nice to have someone willing to support your dreams of being a cartoonist and not ridicule you for quitting your day job.

5. Not having to worry about how you act. It’s stressful as hell to date, because you always feel like you’ve got to be yourself at 110 percent. In a long-term relationship, you can be a dumb dork and they like you more.

6. Having someone to come home to. Also having someone to call an ambulance in case you fall in the shower.

7. Combining domestic superpowers. Between the two of you, you can probably cook, clean, do laundry, and fix things around the house. It’s like you’re one fully formed person. As long as at least one of you isn’t scared of spiders, you’re set.

8. Always having a date to things. There are a lot of things way worse than needing to find a date for a wedding, but it’s nice to know you’re not going to have to ask someone you are sort of casually dating to come meet your entire extended family.

9. Not feeling the pressures of finding someone in your late 20s. Grandma can finally get off your back.

10. Splitting the rent with someone. Do you know what’s better than living on your own? Living with someone you get to have sex with and spending half of your rent money on videogames smart investments.

11. Not having to manscape as often. Shaving your balls is frightening, so being with someone who will accept your balls for what they are is beautiful.

12. Getting woman advice from someone who isn’t your mom. There are some things you need to hear from a woman (advice on dealing with your female boss, vaginas, how birth control works) and it’s nice to get that perspective from someone other than the woman who raised you and thinks you’re perfect and a virgin.

13. Boobs 24/7. Unlimited boobs. You can just wake up and roll over and start touching boobs, guaranteed. That’s great.

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Source: Cosmopolitan.com

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#1. People Will Be Pickier
Settling is totally a thing for generations past. The future will be all about people having a checklist of dealbreakers who aren’t afraid to adhere to them. This will also mean that the actual relationship quality will matter even more, too — as it should be now — but I guess people are going to step it up on that end.

#2. Independence Will Be Paramount
People no longer want to live for someone else, but live for themselves instead, and in doing so, they’re putting themselves first and foremost. Forty percent of those surveyed preferred to stave off co-habitating as a means to retain their independence, while “realizing individual goals will continue to increase.”

#3. Couples Therapy Will Be The Norm
According to EliteSingles psychologist, Dr. Wiebke Neberich, couples are now more willing than ever to recognize issues as their relationship complexities grow, and deal with them, instead of just bailing. Finally! A world where therapy might lose its awful stigma! What a dream!

#4. Living Separately Will Be More Desirable
Living together? Forget it. You have that awesome one-bedroom of yours for a reason, so hang on to it as long as you can. In fact, 60 percent were all about living alone, because, well, indedependence, freedom, and not sharing a bed, obviously.

#5. Marriage Will Be About ‘Experience’ Instead Of ‘Support’
Once an accepted means of “survival,” marriage is no longer steeped in being a necessity thing. Those who marry will do it for reasons other than security and tradition, like for the experience of it.

#6. Serial Monogamy Will Be All The Rage
Although the EliteSingles survey found that people still believe in “the one,” and 85 percent WANTED a life partner, only 45 percent believe in having just one life partner was a possibility. As Dr. Neberich explains, “the future is one in which people have a number of different, shorter-term partners.” This was especially true for women over 45, while those under 35 were still a bit more apt to hang on to the idea of one partner. In this case, although not scientifically proven, romantic comedies are clearly to blame.

#7. Being Single Will No Longer Have a Cliché Age
Once just the stuff of people in their 20s and 30s, the future will be chalk full of singles of  “all age groups as people become single at several points in their life,” because as you know, all that serial monogamy is going on. Maybe double dates with mom?

#8. Online Dating Will Reign Supreme
As we hide further and further behind the comfortable walls that technology has built and we have less time to make actual in-person contact, online dating will not only become more and more the norm, but will be regarded as a “traditional” way to meet people. I wonder if this means the creeps on OKCupid will quit being, well, creepy? Let’s hope so, for the sake of womankind, anyway.

Source: Magazine.foxnews.com

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Sure, it’s romantic to believe that fate brings you and a significant other together. More realistically, however, you likely wake up one day and, whether or not you realize it, your heart tells your head that it’s ready to love. Once that happens, someone will unexpectedly walk into your life and he or she will become the person you decide you want.

When I moved across the country a few years ago, I didn’t want a serious relationship with any guy. After I had found a cool job, a kickass roommate and a great group of friends, though, I began to feel differently. Life was good, I was happy, and my heart decided it was time.

I met someone with whom I had a short, intense and unhealthy relationship. I was not happy dating him, but I wanted desperately to make it work. Why? I chose him when the time was right for me.

My heart might have been ready, but his wasn’t — even though he truly wanted it to be. I felt foolish. When I was finally ready to allow someone into my life, I happened to fall for someone who was terrible for me and who made it difficult for me to trust anyone for a long time following our relationship.

If I had met him at a different point in my life — when I wasn’t prepared to be so open with someone — things would have transpired quite differently. I certainly wouldn’t have attached myself to him. Even if he had, in fact, been a great fit for me, or if he felt like he was ready when I didn’t feel the same, love works best — and feels best — when both people are willing and excited to give and receive.

Admitting that you are at a point in your life to offer and accept love is a big deal; it doesn’t always happen when life is sunshine and rainbows.

My best friend started dating someone about one week before her own cross-country move; she was feeling vulnerable and scared and wanted to hang onto something or someone reminiscent of her hometown. She needed someone at that time, and it’s not that she needed the particular someone she chose — he could have been anyone, really — but he happened to walk into her life at the right moment.

Timing is funny like that; it’s a common reason why people stay in bad relationships. We want to believe our hearts are ready and we’ve found a person who is ready, too — whether or not it’s actually the case. We try to make things work that just aren’t meant to work.

One of my good friends did everything he could to make it work with a significant other. It was frustrating for me and for other friends to witness him try so hard only to have her jerk him around. Though, he felt prepared to let someone into his life and he did everything he could to salvage the relationship. Even after months of her hot-and-cold attitude, he wanted her because she was the one he’d decided to let in.

At some point, you’ve probably heard someone say, “It didn’t work out between us because the timing just wasn’t right.” Hell, you’ve probably even said it yourself. However, the timing isn’t “just” one part of it.

Timing is everything.

It’s totally possible that you’re able to recognize how amazing someone else is, or vice versa, but if the timing is off, giving or receiving love will be difficult. It really doesn’t matter how compatible two people are; if the time isn’t right in someone’s life, he or she won’t be able to love completely.

Immediately after graduation, I spent a summer in San Francisco for an arts program. I met someone who ended up being a great match for me — someone who challenged my thinking, opened up me up to new ideas and was equally interested in me. It was exciting, but not only were we both getting out of long-term relationships, he was also still in school on the West Coast and I was returning to New York in the fall.

Now, this isn’t to say that you shouldn’t pursue someone if the timing is wrong. I still had a great time with the guy I met in San Francisco, but to pursue anything more than we did would have ended in a whole lot of sorrow for us both.

So, flirt, hang out and have sex, but don’t disillusion yourself into thinking that you’re going to be able to change another human being’s wants, needs or personal circumstance. Be honest. Be honest with the other person and with yourself. You deserve to be involved with someone who is able to love you completely.

As much as timing can interfere with our desires and even keep us in bad relationships, timing is also why we feel so incredibly fortunate when we have wonderful, healthy relationships. Suddenly, you have found a person who loves and accepts how weird/funny/cool you are, and the timing is right for you both.

Timing makes you infinitely grateful to have found that person at exactly the moment you did.

Source: elitedaily.com

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Kumasi-based movie actress, Vivian Jill Lawrence, is not the kind of woman who is likely to spend a pesewa on her lover man and she makes that very clear when responding to questions about her choice of man.

Source: Graphic Online

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