Microsoft names Satya Nadella as new CEO, as Gates takes on tech adviser role!

News breaking in now says Microsoft has named Satya Nadella as its new CEO. While Co-founder Bill Gates will take on the role of technical adviser.




Congratulations to Satya Nadella , hope you take the mega company to even greater heights.

Photonews - Atiku, Tinubu, Ribadu, Akande, Others Re-Unite For APC Rally!

Pictured below: 
ACN 2011 presidential candidate Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, interim chairman of APC Chief Bisi Akande, former Lagos state governor Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa state when the ACN leaders arrived at Yola Airport for the party’s rally in Yola.

At Yola Airport:

Family and friends recount Philip Seymour Hoffman's final hours!

The day before he was found dead in a Manhattan apartment, actor Philip Seymour Hoffman went to his favorite coffee shop for a four-shot espresso.

That night, he met two others for dinner at a West Village restaurant.

Nothing appeared out of the ordinary -- either that morning or that night.

But some of those who interacted with Hoffman during the day Saturday paint a different picture.

The mother of his children say he appeared high. A passerby who stopped to say hi to him said the actor appeared "out of it."

In New York's Greenwich Village neighborhood, where Hoffman lived, it was common to see him riding a bicycle and walking his children to the public school they attended.

The Police are reportedly trying to piece together the actor's movements last weekend as they look for anyone who might be linked to the drugs that apparently killed him.

Here is a timeline of what has emerged about Hoffman's final hours before the discovery of his body Sunday.

Saturday morning -- Hoffman stops in at Chocolate Bar on 8th Avenue for his regular order: a four-shot espresso over ice with a splash of milk. He is alone and chats with members of staff. "He seemed perfectly fine," manager Jonathan Hanson tells CNN. "He seemed in good spirits. He was very happy."

Around 1:30 p.m. -- When his  assistant spoke to him on the phone. She also thought he seemed fine, she tells police. The assistant says she had visited him at his rented apartment Friday and noticed nothing out of the ordinary either.

2 p.m. -- The first hint that something is amiss. Mimi O'Donnell, Hoffman's ex-partner and mother of their three children, sees him near his apartment. She later tells authorities she thought he appeared to be high, law enforcement sources say.

5 p.m. -- Hoffman is spotted walking along Greenwich Street by Paul Pabst, executive producer of the syndicated "Dan Patrick Show." Pabst is with his wife and his sister, who plucks up the courage to say hi to Hoffman. 

The actor -- bundled up in "a big, puffy coat" -- appears surprised a stranger recognized him.But he still responds, giving Pabst's sister "a half high-five" before continuing on his way. Pabst says his sister remarks that Hoffman seemed "out of it."

Saturday evening -- Hoffman has dinner with two companions at Automatic Slims, a restaurant and bar in the West Village that he frequently visited. It is a short meal, at which Hoffman reportedly had  cheeseburger, and a cranberry and soda to drink. A bartender at the restaurant, on Washington Street. she said it appeared to be a business dinner.

Around 8 p.m. -- O'Donnell talks to Hoffman on the phone. He again seems to be high, she later tells authorities. After their conversation.

Sunday, 9 a.m. -- Hoffman fails to show up at O'Donnell's home in the West Village to pick up his three children. His no-show causes concern.

11 a.m. -- O'Donnell asks a Hoffman friend, playwright David Katz, to check on the actor. Katz and another person subsequently go to the fourth-floor apartment, where they find him dead, lying on the bathroom floor with a syringe in his left arm. He is wearing shorts and a T-shirt, his eyeglasses still resting on his head, according to law enforcement sources familiar with the inquiry.

Around 11:30 a.m. -- Police are called. They arrive at the apartment shortly afterward. O'Donnell is told what has happened. She quickly picks up their son from the playground and brings him home.

Suspected heroin found in apartment

The aftermath -- Investigators discover close to 50 envelopes of what they believe is heroin in the apartment where Hoffman is found, the law enforcement sources say. They find used syringes, prescription drugs and empty bags that authorities suspect are used to hold heroin.

After the discovery of Hoffman's body, word of his death spreads through the neighborhood.

Prince George Has First Family Vacation at the Caribbean!

Prince George is getting his first taste of a family vacation as reports revealed that Kate Middleton and her baby boy have jetted away to the Caribbean.

The 32 year old mum and 6-month-old George traveled to the island of Mustique, and have also been joined by her parents Carole andMichael Middleton, brother James, and sister Pippa and her boyfriend Nico Jackson.

Convocation address by Kanayo Nwanze to Agriculture and Environmental Sciences graduating students of McGill University!

A friend of mine sent me this address by one of Nigerian's illustrious sons, i find deep and inspiring. It can not be more timely especially at this time when most Nations are undergoing different levels of developmental transformations, hence i decided to share it on this platform.




Convocation address by Kanayo Nwanze at the faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences - McGill University:
My deepest thanks to Chancellor Arnold Steinberg, Chair of the Board, Stuart Cobbett, Principal Heather Munroe Blum, Dean Chandra Madramootoo, Parents, friends and most of all, fellow graduates. Thank you for thehonour of inviting me to be a part of this important day. Congratulations. Félicitations. Or as we say in many parts of Africa, ﺗﻬﺎﻧﻲّ [Tahanía], Hongera, Eku-ise.
You have much to be proud of. You have earned a degree from a fine university; one of the best in the world. This is an important and significant achievement.

The world you are about to enter is very different from the one I stepped into so many years ago. The headlines speak of financial turmoil, alarming unemployment numbers and political instability. But you have two key attributes that will help you thrive in this world: You have fine minds and a
fine education. Use your knowledge – apply it and share it – and not only will you do well for yourselves, you will contribute to making the world a better place.

Let me tell you a little story. Where I come from in Nigeria, there is a saying that when you go to the stream to fetch water, your bucket will only be filled with the water that is yours. No one can take the water that is destined for you. Life will give you what you deserve, nothing more and nothing less. But first you must walk to the stream, bend down and dip your bucket.
Walking to the stream is not always easy. 

When I was younger, much younger than you, I thought I would never get there. My father, at the time, was a travelling teacher. The year I finished elementary school my family moved three times, and I had to wait another year before I could start high school. Then, just when I seemed to be back on the path to higher education, war broke out. The Biafran War that ravaged my country is, even today, a synonym for horror and atrocity.


Three years went by before I finally made it into a university campus. I was 23 years old, and my peers had graduated the year before, well ahead of me.
Yet, I too reached the stream, and my bucket is certainly not empty. What the stream gave me has made my life rich and fulfilling. It has taken time and perseverance, a few stumbles and falls – never totally down, but always with a sense of satisfaction. 

And this is the best advice I can offer: do something that gives you satisfaction. Your work will occupy most of your waking hours, and if it does not give you satisfaction, no matter how rich you may become, you will not be happy – your bucket will feel half empty. As a research scientist, it gave me joy when my papers were accepted for publication. I enjoyed sharing what I had discovered – so be sure someone learns something from you and comes to know how to do it better than you did. In other words, “pass it on”. Knowledge is a gift that grows only when it is shared.

Today, 40 years after graduating from the University of Ibadan, I enjoy a different sort of knowledge sharing. My greatest joy is going to rural communities to sit down with the women, men and children who live there.
In various countries on different continents, in remote regions of the developing world, and in places not found on most maps, I have seen people empowered to transform their own lives with the support of the agency I now work for – the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
When I spoke before about satisfaction, I meant the feeling I get when I hear people talk about how they can now eat two or even three meals a day. How their children can now go to school, or that they have a new clinic down the road. It takes so little to change so much in people’s lives. The secret is to remember that development is not something we do to people but something they do for themselves.

Whether you are planning a career as a scientist or in development, remember to listen to and respect the opinions of the people in the communities where you work. They may not have had the same opportunities as you, but their knowledge of the land and local conditions is far deeper than that of the development workers who parachute in for a few weeks or months. 

They know what they need. Our job is to help them get it. If you want your work to transform lives, you need to look up from your desk and apply the same rigour of thought to understanding the social dimension of local communities that you hope to serve. If you can do this, your work will take root, and although you may not know it, the benefits will last long after you have left, like a footprint in the sands of time. Lives will have been transformed in the process. Your own life will be transformed as well as you come to know the joy of bringing happiness into the lives of others. And that is when you too will come to know true happiness. These are the stories that bring joy to my life and make me realise, every day, that my bucket is certainly not empty – and perhaps it is much more than half full. I wish you every success as you follow your path to the stream.

Remember, you must bend down and dip your bucket to collect your water. And when you do, be sure to share it with your community.

Thank you.

Horrors of Syria's prisons visit Geneva!

Fatima Khan's voice pierces the silence of Geneva's chilly streets as she runs after officials from the Syrian government delegation.

"Why did you kill my son?" she screams. "Tell me, why did you kill my son?"

She receives no answer. The officials walk away in haste, taking long steps while keeping their heads down until they reach a parked black Mercedes and are driven away.

Khan came to the Swiss city from Britain to seek answers as to why her son Abbas Khan, a British doctor, died in a Syrian government-run prison in Damascus.

She says Abbas Khan was a humanitarian worker who travelled to Syria for voluntary work before he was captured and put in jail. His death was announced in December, just a few days before his scheduled release.

The Syrian government says he committed suicide in prison by strangling himself with his pyjamas. The mother accuses the regime of killing him.

Khan knows that coming to Geneva will not bring her son back. She knows that she will never get satisfactory answers.

But she still chased the Syrian delegation through the streets, in the hotel lobbies - and even at the UN headquarters where negotiations between the Syrian government and the opposition were taking place.

"I want to embarrass them in front of everyone. Maybe they will now think twice before killing anyone in detention, maybe this will save another son's life," she told Al Jazeera as she tried to hold back tears.

Political detainees

The Syrian authorities are accused of holding tens of thousands of political detainees. New York-based Human Rights Watch says arbitrary detention and torture has become "business as usual for Syrian security forces".

Just a few days before the Geneva talks, a report emerged purporting to show evidence of systematic torture and killing of about 11,000 detainees.

The government officials on hand in Geneva denied the authenticity of the report. They said the images were fabricated by "the hostile" country of Qatar, which had commissioned the report.

The fate of Syria's detainees became a recurring topic as journalists confronted government officials at the peace conference.

In the media bar of the UN headquarters in Geneva, as Omran Zoabi, Syrian information minister, leisurely sipped coffee in the company of a group of journalists, a reporter seated next to him asked: "What happened to Abdel Aziz al-Khayyer?"

Al-Khayyer, a prominent Damascus-based human rights activist, has been missing for more than a year. His opposition group, the government-tolerated National Coordination Body, has accused the intelligence services of detaining him.

Answering the reporter’s question, Zoabi said: "You are talking about my friend, Abdel Aziz al-Khayyer. He is a friend.

"Even though we had differing views, we used to be driven back from conferences in the same car."

"I want him to be free. He wasn't arrested by the Syrian authorities. If we had information about his whereabouts, we wouldn't have waited until this noise happened."

Another journalist in Geneva asked Faisal Maqdad, Syrian deputy foreign minister, about a list of tens of thousands of names of detainees provided by the opposition to the UN.

Maqdad said: "When we examined the list, we found that 60 to 70 percent of the people in it have never been in prison. Twenty percent were people freed from prison [already]. And the rest, we don’t know anything about them."

Reacting to a claim made by a journalist and echoed by human-rights organisations, Maqdad said: "We do not have children detainees."

Fate of detainees

The negotiations between the two rival Syrian delegations were based on a communique from 2012 that lays out a political transition plan and calls for the creation of humanitarian corridors and the release of detainees.

For those whose family members are believed to be held in prison, nothing could be more ominous than the government's denial of the existence of their loved ones.

The sister of Ahmad Hilmi does not know the fate of her 25-year-old brother. Ahmad, a Red Crescent volunteer, was detained about 20 months ago.

"We continue to hear mixed reports. Some say he is still alive, while others told us he died under torture," she told Al Jazeera.

She was never optimistic that the peace talks in Geneva would lead to the release of her brother - or any of the other detainees.

She blames the international community for its "lack of seriousness" in putting pressure on President Bashar al-Assad's government.

"What you see in Geneva, it's just a theatrical play. The world is pretending to be doing something for Syria but they are wasting time," she said.

Adnan Haddad, a young Syrian activist, came from the war-torn city of Aleppo to observe that play in Geneva.

He sat in the press room watching the Assad government official as he dismissed the opposition-provided list of detainees as inaccurate.

"I'm not surprised," Haddad told Al Jazeera. "If the regime admits to the presence of detainees, it would be condemning itself in front of the international community.

"This is simply because the regime killed a lot of them under torture. The rest of the detainees will be used as a bargaining chip."

Justice for all

Sitting at the doorstep of the entrance to the UN building in freezing weather, Fatima Khan screams to passing crowds that she wants justice for all the detainees still alive in Syria.

"We are living in a civilised world and still the international community allows the Assad regime to get away with crimes," she says.

Fatima Khan was allowed by Syrian authorities to visit her son in prison several times during her five-month stay in Damascus, as she tried to secure his release. She said he looked as malnourished as some of the men pictured in the report about detainee abuse.

"They starved people. He told me they tortured people for pleasure. How can we allow that?" she said.

On the day she thought she was going to meet her son upon his release, she brought the guards chocolates and sweets to celebrate.

"They told me my son committed suicide - while chewing the sweets I had given them."

Tens of thousands march in Paris to protest LGBT rights and easing of abortion restrictions!

Tens of thousands of people marched in Paris and Lyon on Sunday against new laws easing abortion restrictions and legalising gay marriage, accusing French President Francois Hollande's government of "family phobia".

The movement opposes a slew of policies under Hollande, believed to be the the most unpopular French president of modern times , including last year's law allowing gay marriage.

Other targets of LMPT's protests include medically assisted procreation techniques for lesbian couples and in vitro fertilisation.

They are also demanding the scrapping of an experimental school programme aimed at combatting gender stereotypes.

In Lyon, politicians wearing their tricolour sashes walked at the front of the march behind a banner reading, in English, "Brussels, Leave Our Kids Alone".

LMPT official Francois de Vivies said the European Parliament was set to review a report on Tuesday that "again tries to tell us how we are supposed to educate our children".

In Lyon, protesters shouted: "Hollande, You Have Broken France", with many calling for his resignation as well as that of Education Minister Vincent Peillon.

The mass protests come a week after several thousand people marched through Paris in a "Day of Anger" against Hollande's Socialist government.