Bill Gates to buy Akosombo Dam

... Wayo also wants to buy it
LOS ANGELES - Billionaire Bill Gates has submitted a bid to buy Akosombo dam, which has been put up for sale due to the current energy crisis.

Gates' offers pits him against Chicago billionaire Sam Zell and Los Angeles billionaire pair Eli Broad and Ron Burkle.

Ghanaian self-styled billionare Kofi Wayo, who is thought to be the favored bidder by the government, has also put in a bid believed to be in the region of $800m cash.

Little is known about the other offers; it was unclear whether Ghana's govenment, which met Thursday, would consider the latest bids or even extend its deadline beyond April first ....and By The way ....

It's April Fool's Day! Will you fall for a prank today or have you already fallen for this prank?

April 1 has been celebrated as April Fool's Day for centuries. Most people believe it started with the adoption of the "Gregorian" calendar system in Europe in the late 1500s.

The Gregorian calendar is the one we use today. As we all know, it starts the year on Jan. 1. Before, many people celebrated New Year's around the beginning of April.

When the new system was introduced, some people didn't know, or were confused about it, and others just didn't want to make the switch, so they continued celebrating New Year's in April.

Everyone else made fun of them, calling them "April fools." In France, they called them "poissons d'avril" (April fish) and dropped fish down their backs!

In Canada, moles became associated with the holiday, perhaps because they "buried" their heads in the ground and ignored the calendar change, and now the little critters are considered our country's official April Fool's Day mascots!

Nowadays, April 1 is a day when anyone can end up looking like a fool, not just people celebrating New Year's!

One of the most famous public pranks was done by a BBC program in 1957. They reported that the "spaghetti tree weevil infestation" was over, so Swiss farmers were harvesting more spaghetti than usual. They even showed a woman picking pieces of spaghetti in an orchard. Hundreds of people called the BBC that day to ask how they could grow their own spaghetti tree!

In 2005, NASA said they had a picture of water on Mars. It turned out to be a picture of a glass of water on a Mars bar.

Newspapers report pranks like this, but also write their own prank articles.

Two years ago, the Toronto Star reported that Ashton Kutcher and Paris Hilton were going to star in a remake of the movie Casablanca.

Can you find any "suspicious" articles on Todays GhanaWeb?

The Internet company Google is notorious for its April Fool's hoaxes.

In 2004, they told everyone that they were opening a lab on the moon; in 2005 they pretended that they were releasing a special drink called "Google Gulp" that would optimize one's use of the Google search engine by increasing the drinker's intelligence; last year they launched a fake dating service.

Have fun being fooled today. Go ahead and fool someone else! But don't forget: in Ghana, we have a tradition of ending April Fool's Day at noon. If you pull a prank after that, you're the one who's called a fool!