Latest news with #24H
Business Insider
23-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
All you need to know about Ghana's ambitious 24-Hour Economy
Ghana is poised to launch a groundbreaking economic policy dubbed the 24-Hour Economy and Accelerated Export Development Programme, or 24H in July 2025. Ghana plans to launch the '24-Hour Economy and Accelerated Export Development Programme' in 2025 to boost productivity and economic growth. The $4 billion initiative will receive $300-$400 million in government funding to attract private investment for infrastructure projects. The program aims to create 1.7 million jobs within four years by focusing on key sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, and logistics. The ambitious initiative, spearheaded by President John Dramani Mahama's administration, aims to revolutionise the country's productivity framework by extending economic activity beyond conventional hours and integrating critical sectors into a cohesive value chain. Government seed capital to catalyse private sector Investment The 24H+ programme is estimated to cost $4 billion, with the government committing between $300 million and $400 million as seed capital. This initial funding is intended to bridge viability gaps and make bulk infrastructure projects commercially attractive to private investors. 'The initial projected cost is about $4 billion. Of that, $300 to $400 million will come from government to support the viability gap requirement, ensuring bulk infrastructure is commercially sound and attractive to private investors,' explained Mr Augustus Goosie Obuodum Tanoh, Presidential Advisor on the 24-Hour Economy. He added that private sector pledges are already nearing $2 billion. The initiative is envisioned as a national economic reboot with the goal of creating 1.7 million decent jobs within four years. It focuses on key value chains in agriculture, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, textiles, infrastructure, and logistics, targeting import substitution, export growth, and all-day productivity. 'Despite growth, job creation has stagnated. In the 1990s, a 10% GDP growth translated to 7% job growth. Today, it's barely 2%. The 24H+ programme will ensure growth translates into prosperity for Ghanaians, not just foreign systems,' said Abdul-Nasser Alidu, Head of Strategy and Programmes at the 24H+ Secretariat. Eight strategic pillars for transformation The 24H+ programme is structured around eight interlinked sub-programmes: Grow24 – focuses on agriculture, with flagship initiatives like Eden Volta to transform the Volta Basin into a food powerhouse, and Shikpon, an urban farming scheme. Make24 – targets manufacturing, including the creation of 50 industrial parks to make Ghana West Africa's production hub. Build24 and Connect24 – aim to develop supportive infrastructure such as air cargo terminals, cold chain logistics, and inland water transport. Fund24 – provides financial incentives including concessional loans, tax credits, and a new Strategic Value Chain Development Fund (SVCDF), partially financed by levies on selected imports. Show24 – supports the creative economy and tourism. Aspire24 – focuses on human capital development. Go24 – promotes governance and civic engagement. Attractive incentives for businesses To support round-the-clock operations, businesses will be offered incentives such as: Preparing businesses for take-off A national 24-Hour Readiness Programme will also be introduced to prepare over 5,000 businesses in all 16 regions to fully embrace the new economic model.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
For Memorial Day, remembering the 14 flyboys who died in Palm Beach County during WWII
Fourteen flyboys, young men in their 20s and late teens — some married, others just out of high school — along with their hopes and dreams died three days before Christmas 1943 in likely the deadliest air crash in Palm Beach County. A final adieu was never broadcast far and wide, and their story hardly ever told until a Palm Beach Post reporter learned what happened 70 years later. They came to be known as The Forgotten 14. It was smack in the middle of the most destructive war mankind has ever known. The 14 servicemen loaded onto a bomber in the wee hours of Dec. 22, 1943 to travel to a secret destination from Morrison Field, which later became Palm Beach International Airport. They flew in a bomber, the 24H. A previous model had had problems lifting off the runway. One of the servicemen, Bert Sauls, called his family ahead of the flight, worried: "We'll never make it. We're overloaded." Read the Post reporter's full story: The Forgotten 14: A story never told They cleared the end of the runway and then clipped the tops of three or four Australian pines about three-quarters of a mile from there. Engine parts were found at the base of those trees. The plane bounced off the ground and came down in a cow pasture. Then the full fuel tanks burst into flames. Onlookers, many awoken by the sound of the crash, raced to the site. They said they couldn't get past the "sheet of flames." They did manage to rescue two survivors — Artillery Gunner Howard Sewell and navigator Radamés E. Cáceres. Sewell told an officer from his hospital bed that the engines had no problems; they were "purring like a kitten." Within 36 hours of the crash, he and Cáceres were gone. The oldest of the 14 was pilot Samuel Gerald Dean, of Helena, Montana at age 27. He met his wife, Louise, not long before he signed up, which was about a month after Pearl Harbor — Dec. 7, 1941. She followed him from base to base and was pregnant when he died. Sam Jr. would be born about two months after the crash. 2. Dean's co-pilot was Edward Joseph Wolbers of Loveland, Ohio. He died days shy of age 27, a Christmas baby. "He was a wonderful person," his sister-in-law Dorothy Wolbers said in 2014. 3. Cáceres, like Dean, enlisted about a month after Pearl Harbor. The 21-year-old single man hailed from Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico. 4. Bombardier Douglas Laurent Dauphin, 22, of St. Claire Shores, Michigan descended from French Canadians. He was the only one of six brothers who didn't make it back. He and Henrietta had been married three months. 5. The only Floridian was master gunner Sauls, 20, who came from Mango, a little settlement east of Tampa. "My dad was a Christian, and he wanted to fight for his country," daughter Sylvia Diane Sauls Waugh said in 2014. Sauls's second daughter, Linda Louise, would be born two months after he died. 6. Staff Sgt. Kenneth N. Markle, 25, the radio operator, was another one from New York — Middletown in the Hudson Valley region. 7. Artillery gunner Louis Karp, 25, another staff sergeant, had been a clerk in the Bronx when he enlisted on Nov. 14, 1942. He is buried in Queens in Mount Lebanon Cemetery. 8. James Henry "Jim" Henderson, 21, a second artillery gunner, had already lost his cousin Pete to noncombat injuries when he enlisted in October 1942. He was single and a civilian truck driver. 9. Douglas Vincent Schmoker, 20, another artillery gunner, also signed up in October 1942 and was single. He'd had two years of high school. 10. Sewell, one of the initial survivors of the crash, had turned 19 two weeks before the crash. He hailed from Erie, Pennsylvania and had a girlfriend. 11. George M. "Pud" Durrett, due to turn 23 three weeks later, was one of four brothers to join the military. Durrett of West Point, Mississippi was the only one to die. 12. Robert H. Watson, 22, of Fresno, California, attended Fresno State College for one semester in 1939. He had a brother in the Navy. 13. Harold Edwin Richards, 25, from Elmwood, Nebraska, worked for Nabisco when he enlisted more than a year before Pearl Harbor. In December 1942, he was transferred to the Army Air Corps. He'd married Verna Faye Miller on March 15. 14. James Dixon "Big Jim" Fore, 22, from Whiteville, North Carolina, was the first in his family to graduate from West Point. Two days after graduation, he married his wife, Theo. They didn't get the send-off they deserved until now-retired Post staff writer and historian Eliot Kleinberg happened upon their story. Kleinberg, who wrote the Post-Times history column for decades, was corresponding with the U.S. Air Force Historical Research Agency in Alabama when a researcher told him they had a number of files about Morrison Field. Day after day, fat envelopes began to arrive. Many were reports of minor plane mishaps. "Then I came across one that stopped me cold," he said. "It listed 14 names. In the column for injuries, each box read, 'F' — Fatal. Fatal, fatal, fatal. — Fourteen times." He thought he knew everything important that had happened in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast during World War II. But not this. "I stood up and walked right into the Post library and pulled out the microfilm roll for December 1943," he said. "And there it was. A small article. Five paragraphs. The next day, two paragraphs. Then nothing." Kleinberg had months — in time for Memorial Day 2014 — to tell their story, including finding photos to show all of their faces. He did. He tracked down and called relatives. "Many were touched, and a little confused, that I was writing this seven decades later," Kleinberg said. "I told them simply that the first time around, we hadn't." Holly Baltz, who has a passion for history, is The Palm Beach Post's investigations editor. You can reach her at hbaltz@ This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: For Memorial Day, remembering 14 World War II flyboys who died in PBC
