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Stevie Wonder: becoming Ghanaian on my birthday is amazing

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Legendary singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder is officially Ghanaian.

On Monday – the US musical icon’s 74th birthday – he was granted citizenship of Ghana by the nation’s president.

“This is it, congratulations!” Nana Akufo-Addo told a beaming Wonder, handing the Grammy winner a certificate at a ceremony in the presidential palace where he was also presented with a birthday cake with a Ghanaian flag iced on top.

Wonder told the BBC that gaining Ghanaian nationality on his birthday was an “amazing thing”.

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The superstar was born and bred in the US state of Michigan but has long had an affinity for Ghana – a West African nation thousands of miles from home.

In 1975, with a string of hit albums behind him, Wonder openly expressed a desire to quit music and move to Ghana. He believed his ancestral lineage could be traced there, reports say.

Wonder stuck with singing and stayed stateside, but after headlining a Ghanaian music festival in the 1990s, he again expressed a desire to set up home there.

On a later trip to Ghana, Wonder wrote the entirety of his album Conversation Peace and in an interview just three years ago the star said he was moving to Ghana in order to escape racial injustice in the US.

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Wonder’s love affair with the country was ignited by the people he met whilst there.

He told the BBC that one of these encounters was with late Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings, who in the 1990s hosted him at the presidential residence.

“I remember the late President Rawlings, who allowed me to be a co-pilot on a flight,” Wonder said.

“I was able to fly with him from one end of Ghana to the other end. The north to the south, and it was amazing.”

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Stevie Wonder gains citizenship in Ghana
Flanked by his family and donning a scarf made of traditional kente cloth, Wonder was visibly delighted to have finally become Ghanaian.

Ghana has long prided itself on being a bastion of pan-Africanism – its founding leader, Kwame Nkrumah, called the West African state a “Black Mecca”.

Wonder is just the latest African-American icon to celebrate this message – writer W E B Du Bois moved to Ghana and was buried there in 1963, while Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali all paid high-profile visits to the country to reconnect with their African roots.

In 2001, Ghana became the first nation on the continent to give the descendants of Africans the right to stay.

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Since then, Africans in the diaspora have been able to live and work in Ghana without renewing their visas or work permits.

And in 2019 the Ghanaian government launched the “year of return” initiative to encourage Africans in the diaspora to relocate there.

More than 300 Africans in diaspora have been granted Ghanaian citizenship since.

In a statement, Ghana’s interior ministry said Wonder becoming a citizen “marks a significant milestone in the country’s efforts to attract diasporan Africans and recognise outstanding contributions to the African diaspora”.

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The man himself said he now plans to engage in initiatives that will create great job opportunities for Ghana’s youth, who make up roughly 38% of the population.

“The youngest generation is in Africa. We need to begin to think about how their greatness can shine,” he said.

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Entertainment

Diddy Implicated in Tupac’s Murder: New Court Documents Reveal Shocking Allegations

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U.S. rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs was further implicated in new court documents that claimed he paid $1 million to have Tupac Shakur assassinated in 1996.

Mr Combs’ name appeared in the records over 75 times.

Key suspect Duane ‘Keefe D’ Davis, who was apprehended in Tupac’s murder probe last year, said Diddy had funded his rival’s assassination on September 7, 1996, according to court documents obtained by U.S. Sun.

Pseudonyms ranging from Puff Daddy, P Diddy and Diddy were mentioned in the documents filed on July 18, where the first reference indicated that there was already bad blood between Diddy and Tupac.

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The “deadly rivalry” between Diddy’s Bad Boy Records on the East Coast and Tupac’s Death Row Records, then owned by Marion “Suge” Knight on the West Coast, was not a secret in the hip-hop industry.

Keefe told law enforcement that Diddy paid $1 million to another gangster, Eric Von Martin, to kill Tupac.

According to Keefe’s account in court records, Diddy reached out after the news of Tupac’s assassination broke, asking whether it was “us” or another rival gang.

“Sean Combs reaches out to Defendant wondering if South Side Crips were responsible for Shakur’s death by asking, ‘Is that us?’,” court records showed. “Defendant, beaming with pride, answers, ‘Yes’.”

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Keefe had willingly given up the information under the assumption that he had immunity from prosecution, which had now backfired and could be used to convict him.

“Defendant( Keefe) asserted that the conspiracy to commit the murder began in California between Defendant, Eric ‘Zip’ Martin, and Sean Combs,” court filings stated

Keefe admitted to LA police detectives that his nephew Orlando ‘Baby Lane’ Anderson “popped the dude (Tupac), narrating in detail how his nephew “leaned over, rolled down the window, and popped them.”

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What I Achieved While I Took A Break From Acting – Emeka Ike

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Veteran Nollywood actor, Emeka Ike, who recently returned to the screen after a prolonged absence, has shared the significant strides he made during his time away from the industry.

In an interview with NollyNow, Ike explained that his break allowed him to develop new, iconic brands.

“My absence wasn’t really bad because it created room for me to build more brands apart from Emeka Ike you know. I now own Nollywood TV on Startimes and I am building other brands that are highly in demand,” Ike stated.

He also mentioned that his time away from the industry also allowed him to explore opportunities in politics.

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Ike expressed his enthusiasm about returning to entertain his fans and fulfill his role as one of Nollywood’s pioneering actors. “We’re breaking the ice once again. I aim to keep entertaining my fans and meet their expectations,” he added.

Emeka Ike’s disappearance from the screen followed the end of his marriage to Suzanne Emma, who is half-Dutch and half-Nigerian.

It’s worth noting that their marriage which began in 2000 and produced four children, officially ended on July 13, 2015, following allegations of constant battery, leading to its dissolution by a Lagos Island Customary Court.

The Nollywood actor and film producer has found happiness again with his new wife, Yolanda Pfeiffer, and they have a baby girl.

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Singer Sean Kingston, mother accused of wire fraud, face 20 years in prison

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Popular American singer Sean Kingston, whose real name is Kisean Anderson, has been indicted for his alleged involvement in a $1 million wire fraud scheme.

Kingston, along with his mother Janice Turner, was charged in a Miami federal court on Friday.

Daily Mail on Friday said according to the indictment, the scheme involved making fraudulent payments through banks that were never processed, resulting in the accumulation of over $1 million in property.

Kingston and Turner have been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and five counts of wire fraud.

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If convicted, they face up to 20 years in prison on each count.

According to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, the defendants “unjustly enriched themselves by falsely representing that they had executed bank wire or other monetary payment transfers.”

The payments, however, never went through, allowing the defendants to obtain $1 million in property without payment.

Kingston was previously arrested nearly two months ago in California, shortly after a SWAT team raided his rented mansion in Southwest Ranches, Florida.

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The Broward County Sheriff’s Office stated that the “Beautiful Girls” artist was taken into custody on a Florida warrant for numerous fraud and theft charges. His mother was also arrested that day.

Following his arrest in May, Robert Rosenblatt, an attorney representing Kingston and his mother, told the Associated Press, “We are aware of some of the allegations being made against both of them. We look forward to addressing these in court and are confident of a successful resolution for Sean and his mother.”

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