Ukraine president announces return to work!

Ukraine's embattled president announced on Sunday that he would return to work after four days' sick leave, as protesters filled Kiev's main square to demand he give up power.

Opposition leaders, addressing the crowd after meeting European and US officials, said they hoped for international mediation in negotiations with the government and for constitutional change to limit presidential power.

Viktor Yanukovych who angered opponents in November by spurning a trade pact with the European Union and turning instead to Moscow for financial support, announced on Thursday he was on sick leave. The president has not been seen in public since.

Nebo assures Nigerians of steady electricity supply!

The Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, on Sunday reassured Nigerians, especially industrialists, of steady electricity supply in a very short time.

Nebo gave the assurance at the investiture of the newly elected president and council of the Enugu Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (ECCIMA) in Enugu.

According to him, downturn in the power sector is only temporal and that government is doing everything possible to provide stable electricity.

“Lots of work is being done. Government is putting the right mechanisms to ensure adequate electricity 24/7,’’ he said.

Nebo praised industrialists for their steadfastness, urging them to support government’s endeavour toward making them succeed.

The minister said that the Federal Government had commenced the mapping out of industrial and agricultural clusters across the country with a view to giving them electricity.

“Industry and manufacturing are keys to economic development and give a double digit growth to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP),’’ he said.

The Chairman, National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Dr Sam Amadi, said that privatisation was a major component factor in the power sector reform.

“The establishment of a competitive electricity market with free entry and exit for private providers is the major objective of the power sector reform in Nigeria,’’ Amadi said.

Amadi urged Nigerians to stop politicising power, saying that to privatise power was not an easy process.

According to him, the next phase of the power reform is to regulate the tariff, which he said, was already in progress.

He appealed to chambers of commerce in the country to support the transformation agenda of the present administration by ensuring the realisation of the power reform objectives.

The chairman presented a paper entitled, “New power Sector Regime as Panacea to Stable and Quality Electricity Supply’’.

Earlier, the Director-General of the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Dr Joseph Odumodu, stressed the need for the public to be vigilant and take action whenever they buy substandard products.

Odumodu said vigilance was necessary in curbing the existence of counterfeit and substandard products in Nigeria.

In his acceptance speech, the new President, Dr Ifeanyi Okoye, said he would redouble efforts to move the council forward.

Okoye said he would focus on promotion of the agriculture sector as well as improve on the activities of manufacturers.

In his remarks, the past president of ECCIMA, Dr Theo Okonkwo, urged the new executive to remain focused, and promised to offer useful advice to the chamber if need be.

The event witnessed awards to some distinguished industrialists in the South-East zone of the country. 

Source:News Agency of Nigeria

Amazing picture shows newborn delivered INSIDE its amniotic sac!

A doctor recorded the moment he  delivered a baby inside an intact amniotic sac.

The photo was reportedly taken by Obstetrician ,  Aris Tsigris after he delivered a baby through caesarean section. He uploaded the photo on Facebook.
According to the doctor, because the sac had had not been punctured, the baby did not even realise it had been born and behaved as if it was still inside the mother’s womb.




The amniotic sac is a bag of fluid inside the womb where the unborn baby develops and grows. It is also referred to as the ‘membranes’, because the sac is made of two membranes called the amnion and the chorion.
The sac is filled with clear, pale fluid, in which the unborn baby floats and moves.
The fluid helps to cushion the baby from bumps and injury, as well as providing them with fluids that they can breathe and swallow. The fluid also maintains a constant temperature for the baby.
The amniotic sac starts to form and fill with fluid within days of a woman conceiving. 
Amniotic fluid is mainly water but from about week 10 onwards, the baby passes small amounts of urine into the fluid.

2015 Valentine’s Day Presidential elections, informed by rational and logical considerations – Jega!

The Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, has said the timetable for the 2015 general election recently announced by the Commission was informed by rational and logical considerations, not sentimental or ulterior motivations. 



He said the Commission was mindful of its own operational effectiveness and global best practice in grouping national elections together on one day, and state elections together on another. 
The timetable announced two weeks ago by INEC schedules National Assembly and Presidential elections for February 14, 2015, and Governorship as well as State Assembly elections for February 28, 2015. 
While fielding questions from that audience after a presentation he made at a well-attended forum at Chatham House, London, at the weekend, Professor Jega dismissed suggestions that INEC was under external pressure in designing the election timetable the way it did. “Nobody has put us under any pressure. We did these things logically and rationally, in terms of what we considered best for our country,” he said. 
The Chatham House event was a public forum at the instance of Africa Programme unit of the organisation, which invited Professor Jega to make a presentation on ‘2015 Elections in Nigeria: Expectations and Challenges.’ Responding to an enquiry on the rationale for the election schedules, the INEC chairman explained that the country is not up to having all the elections in one day. He also disagreed with suggestions that the 
elections were drastically reordered, when compared to 2011. 

“As far as we are concerned, the presidential election is not positioned first. What we did is that we combined the National elections, so you can’t say that presidential election is placed first,” he said. 

Professor Jega explained: “Some Nigerians wonder why we can’t have all the elections in one day. It is true that in some countries, they conduct all their elections in one day. From our own assessment, the enormity of challenges associated with that is such that we are not prepared in the electoral commission to do all the elections in one day. But then, we felt that instead of having three elections, let us have two. In 2011, we had three: we did the National Assembly elections first; then, the Presidential; and then, the Governorship as well as State Assembly elections. But we felt that (in 2015), let us have two elections rather than three. Then we said: what is the best combination in line with global best practice? The global best practice is that you do national elections separate from state elections, if you can’t do all together. So, rather than have the Presidential and Governorship elections together, or the National Assembly with State Assembly elections; we said, let us have all the national elections together, and then the state elections. 
“That is the logic, that is the rationale; and it is defensible. But you hear politicians make all manners of allegations; because in their own calculation, some people want certain elections to come first, others want it to come later. If you do not satisfy what they want, then they would start accusing you as if there is an interest being served, or that we came under some pressure. Nobody has put us under any pressure.” 
The INEC chairman added that the elections were slated for February 2014 to allow time for litigations before the commencement of new tenures. This schedule, he noted, perfectly conforms to legal provisions requiring elections to be conducted not earlier than 150 days and not later than 30 days before the expiration of relevant tenures. 
“In 2011, we did voter registration in January/February, that was why the elections had to wait till April. But since we are not doing a fresh registration in 2015, we said let’s have the elections early in the period permissible, so that there will be more time before swearing-in for litigation.” 

Professor Jega assured that INEC is sparing no effort to ensure that the challenge of logistics which marred past elections is prevented in future elections, namely the Ekiti and Osun governorships, and the 2015 general election. 
He, however, regretted that reports of that challenge during the November 2013 Anambra State governorship election were overblown. 

He said: “The issue of logistics is a major challenge for INEC, and we are doing our best to address it. But for Anambra, the state has 31 local government areas, and the challenge we faced was with regard to one local government – Idemili North. Since the Edo State governorship election, we started customising result sheets to specific wards and polling units. In the past, politicians would get result sheets and move them around. So, we started customised the result sheets. And so, if there was a mix-up in the distribution among polling units, you would have the kind of crisis we had in Anambra. Of course, there was no reason why there should be that kind of mix-up, and we were not satisfied by the explanation given by the Electoral Officer in charge of that local government. But the fact was: before we could retrieve and redistribute those result sheets, time had lapsed and the people had become agitated. Some even blocked our officials from proceeding with the process of redistribution, because they suspected that something funny was happening. 

“What we have done is to have that officer arraigned in court. He has been charged, because it is a criminal offence to obstruct the electoral process or undermine elections. The matter is in court, and is being prosecuted. So, we are doing our best. You cannot stop people from interpreting what happened one way or the other, especially as it is true that Idemili is an area considered a stronghold of one of the candidates. Was it done deliberately? That is what the court case will be addressing. But we cannot allow this to continue to happen. And that is why we are paying a lot of attention to addressing the challenge. We have demonstrated a capacity to identify people who are responsible for failures, and to hold them accountable. And that is another thing that wasn’t the case in the past. It is a big challenge and we will continue to do our best in that regard.” 

The INEC chairman is certain that the challenge of people not finding their names on the biometric register of voters on Election Day will not reoccur if every voter make the effort to ascertain their status during impending display of the register before the commencement of Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) nationwide. Besides, there are additional means being put in place by the Commission to facilitate voter enquiry about the register. He said: “We have already provided a service in that regard, using the SMS platform. In fact, in Anambra – although it came a bit late before the election, and there was no massive publicity to get the people adequately aware – we deployed the use of SMS to enable the voter to interrogate the register. You could send an SMS to a particular number to know whether you are on the register, and in which polling unit you have registered. We hope to launch this facility nationwide by the end of this month, so that people can interrogate the register. And before the 2015 elections, we hope to have the register accessible on INEC website so that people can ascertain their status.”

The Chatham House forum in London was an extension of a similar event organised earlier in the week by the United States Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC. Professor Jega was invited to give a keynote speech on ‘2015 Elections in Nigeria: Preparations and Challenges,’ at a public event where leading Nigerian Civil Society activist were panellists. 

Award-winning Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman Died of apparent drug overdose!

Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead of an apparent drug overdose late Sunday morning in his New York City apartment.

Law-enforcement officials said a hypodermic needle and two glassine envelopes containing what appeared to be heroin were found in the apartment on Bethune Street in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan.

The 46-year-old actor was found in the bathroom of his fourth floor apartment in the Pickwick House around 11:15 a.m. by screenwriter David Katz, who called 911, a law-enforcement official said. Mr. Katz had been concerned after not being able to get in touch with Mr. Hoffman, the official said.

The New York Police Department is investigating, and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is working to determine the exact cause of death.

Mr. Hoffman was most recently seen in "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire," the second installment in the blockbuster "Hunger Games" series from Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.

He was set to star in two more installments in the franchise that are scheduled for release. "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1" is set to come out in November, with "Part 2" scheduled for November 2015.

"It's horrible, just horrible," he said. "I think he's the greatest actor of his generation."

Colombia nabs fugitive priest linked to criminal gangs!

Colombian authorities have arrested a fugitive priest convicted of links to criminal gangs, an official said Saturday.

Oscar Ortiz was sentenced in absentia to 19 years in prison for ties to right-wing militias and drug traffickers in Medellin.

A police source, who asked not to be named, said that Ortiz was tracked down to a house in the town of La Virginia.

Ortiz's lawyer Jose de Jesus Diaz Moncada told local newspaper El Colombiano his client was innocent and was appealing his conviction at the Latin American country's Supreme Court.

Medellin, Colombia's second largest city is a former drug lord fiefdom. Long considered one of the most dangerous places on the planet, it has seen crime rates fall and neighborhood life return thanks to new public services in some of its poorest areas.