₦airaland Forum

Say no to drug abuse

This is superb and awesome

Bank of Shades

madgoat:
See ehn, it seems its a 3rd party app bug that's causing it. The same thing started happening on my Infinix hot 4 lite few days ago. I solved it yesterday by doing this : Go to phone settings, click on APPS, then click on the option menu at the top right corner. A pop up will appear. Click on RESET APP PREFERENCES.
Your hotspot will be back to normal.
Once i discover the app causing the prob i will delete it from my fone.

they are those crazy updates I have uninstalled Them
thanks is working fine now

CarlcareOpebi:
Yes. @blueghost If the problem persists visit the Carlcare Service Centre closest to you for repairs. You will find our contact numbers and addresses in your Carlcare App or let me know your current location, so I can forward a specific address to you.

oh mine thanks so much it's working perfectly and my battery is OK... I uninstalled those updates as you instructed. thanks one again

madgoat:
See ehn, it seems its a 3rd party app bug that's causing it. The same thing started happening on my Infinix hot 4 lite few days ago. I solved it yesterday by doing this : Go to phone settings, click on APPS, then click on the option menu at the top right corner. A pop up will appear. Click on RESET APP PREFERENCES.
Your hotspot will be back to normal.
Once i discover the app causing the prob i will delete it from my fone.

thanks I appreciate so much it didn't work I think I will go with factory reset

CarlcareOpebi:
Hello @blueghost Go to SETTINGS, scroll down & click on APPS; Tap the 3-dotted icon at the top - a pop up will appear. Now click on RESET APP PREFERENCES. Check for changes. If there's none, click on Hot-spot settings, then Reset OOB. Or Look for Font Manager or Babel Font & uninstall the updates. One of these should do it.

thanks so much it still did not work I think is to reset to factory settings
could that solve it too??

I am using infinix hot 3 all of a sudden the hot spot I do enjoy stops working. when I switched it on it turns off on its own after 10 seconds .
I have gone to hotspot settings to put it on always turn on yet to no avail
Pls I will be glad if I'm helped
thanks

Woah super amazing talent Nigeria got it all if given the proper platform to express

Super Boy The way he lifted his mum sha is amazing lovely family

our politicians need this food very well to cut cost of flying abroad for diabetes treatment lol

Acha is the name in Hausa the scientific being Acha digitariaexiles(fonio or hungry rice) Achais very nutritious and good for diabetic patients because of the low carbohydrate content. It's very cheap and a must have for healthy meals. Acha can be made in tuwo form as if one is making semolina, it can be made in a jellof form
Benefits
1. Fonio as energy food
Fonio has been utilized as staple food to meet the every day energy necessity. It provides 3.6 calories per gram of grain, that is similar to other cereals. Still it is simple to digest and doesn’t dramatically boost blood glucose levels. It is becoming more popular as breakfast cereal in Europe, since it is filling and simpler to cook.
2. Fonio is Gluten free
Many people throughout US along with other nations today have problems with Celiac disease. It’s because the intolerance to their body towards gluten. Only way of dealing with this ailment is always to prevent gluten food. The majority of the energy food we eat including wheat, corn etc. consists of gluten. Fonio provides a good option of gluten free energy food to individuals.
3. Fonio aids digestion
Fonio is simpler to digest and is also suitable for children and older people. It’s got sufficient quantity of fibers that are necessary to keep digestive system smooth. It will help in bowel motions and helps prevent constipation. Fonio is considered to encourage appetite as well as secretion of digestive juices. In certain parts of Africa, Fonio is provided as food to individuals struggling with stomach problems.
4. Fonio aids cardiovascular function
Fonio has got modest seeds and is also usually consumed in dehusked but whole form. Studies suggest that consuming whole grain decreases chance of cardio vascular problems which includes heart disease and stroke. The barn and germ of fonio are full of vitamins, minerals along with other nutrition which will help to keep our heart healthy.
5. Fonio is good for diabetes
Fonio have been long utilized as diabetic food. Fonio has got lower glycemic index. It really is absorbed in body gradually and therefore effect on blood sugar is gradual. Fonio is additionally thought to have insulin secreting qualities and helps with managing blood glucose levels in body. Earlier lab research also recommend benefits of fonio in diabetes because of its low GI when compared with other daily foods. Fonio offers body along with minerals chromium and sulphur containing amino acids that are considered to decrease inflammation and diabetes.
6. Fonio as weight loss
Fonio is promoted in west as weight loss food. This particular energy food provides great deal of fibers and provides a feeling of filled stomach. With low glycemic index, it can benefit body decrease food cravings whilst offering required energy required. As a result it may help with managing weight. However no direct proof is accessible when it has got any effect on fat metabolism or ability to burn fat.
7. Fonio benefits for women
Fonio is extremely full of important amino acids, folic acid as well as iron. As a result it plays important role in iron metabolism. It’s good in avoiding anemia. This particular nourishing food is typically suitable for pregnant as well as lactating women in Africa.
8. Fonio benefits for skin and hair
Methionine is sulphur that contains amino acid contained in fonio which can be essential for formation of cartilage. It strengthens your nails and hair. It helps in avoiding hair loss. Methionine has additionally anti-aging effect on the skin and helps with decreasing aging process. Similarly, amino acid cystine is building block for the skin and hair. It may also help in detoxification and therefore keeps the skin healthy. Cystine helps in healing wounds or burns.
9. Other benefits of Fonio
Fonio provide body along with sufficient supply of essential amino acids – Methionine and cystine. Jointly they help liver function and helps in detoxing process. A few earlier research point out to their benefits in preventing liver damage and colon cancers. They are useful in drug removal symptoms.
naijafavor..nl/2016/09/health-benefits-of-fonio-anti-diabetic.html?m=1

will have the car then sell it and invest the money on something big then i can buy the books and more of the car

If you want to save space, write in Chinese.
The payoff of those labyrinthine characters is that they can fit a lot of information into a small symbol.
One example— Here's the same sentence in English and Chinese:
What time did you get up in the morning?
你早上几点起床？
If it's books you're publishing, half of the forest is still there. If it's tweets, there's still a long way to 140.
Of course, the other side of the bargain is that, since the Bronze Age, literate Chinese people have had to spend years of their lives getting thousands of ornate figures to stay put in their memories, so that they can scratch them out with a pen on demand.
But in 2016, you can live most of your life on a screen if you're careful, and so the difficulty of writing a language by hand is losing relevance.
What matters: How easy is it to type, and text.
Ease of typing in Chinese
In the case of Chinese, the 3,500-year commitment seems to have paid off. For a writing system that got its start in etchings on turtle shells, it’s amazingly efficient for digital communication. [Related: What's the Hardest Language to Learn? ]
Not only does it use a no-frills grammar system and eschew spacing altogether, but because of the challenges posed by thousands of unique characters, the Chinese have been forced to use clever software fixes to push QWERTY to its limits. ... On desktop keyboards and touchscreens alike, Chinese people favor sophisticated predictive input tools, while the West mostly falls back on what-you-hit-is-what-you-get typing – a method that does a nice job of simulating a typewriter but doesn't explore any of the more agile solutions that software might open up.
The most popular Chinese input tool has you write out a word with a phonetic alphabet called pinyin , and then select from a pop-up menu of characters that you're likely looking for. The twist: For many phrases, the only information necessary is the initial letter of each character (technically, the initial letter of the character's phonetic spelling), so you can write whole sentences with just a few letters.
If you want to write "Have you eaten yet?" in Chinese, just key in "nclm," a first-letter-only version of the phrase "Ni chi le ma?" which would be called up as the corresponding characters on your screen.
For "The air pollution is pretty severe today," just hit "jtkqwrhyz," and the characters corresponding to the phrase "Jin-tian kong-qi wu-ran hen yan-zhong" will be the first suggestion.
It's something like being able to type whole sentences in "ttyl"-style text-speak, but the end result is still proper Chinese. So the same tool can be used for chats and professional emails alike.
The system has weak spots, especially when it comes to unusual characters, and there are plenty of predictive input tools available in English as well. But even if typists of both languages were using predictive software and hitting keys at the same speed, a Chinese typist might still have an edge in that: The Chinese language can often convey an idea more concisely; and the characters offer a natural way to break words down into their component chunks, which is ideal for giving a predictive tool an info-rich outline of a word or phrase. （As an example, compare the word "beautiful" and its Chinese equivalent, "美丽." The Chinese word can be easily separated into its two component characters, whose initials can then be used to sketch the word for a piece of software, while in English there’s no obvious rule for how to reduce words to a few key joints.）
[Check out the Best Android Keyboard Apps from Live Science sister site, Tom's Guide]
Compact writing systems
It raises the question, then, whether there's a written language that's even better suited to digital communication — one whose compactness, or amenability to predictive input software, makes it the Internet generation’s optimal writing system.
The United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights is available in 475 languages and counting. Comparing translations of the document based on character count shows that languages with thousands of distinct symbols at their disposal, such as Japanese, Chinese and Korean, have an advantage in compressing their communications, with Chinese as the language to beat (even after accounting for its lack of spaces), according to this journalist's informal survey. [Related: 25% of the World's Languages Are Threatened ]
Nuosu, an ancient logographic language used by the Yi ethnic group in southwest China, is Chinese's closest rival in terms of compactness, while vowel-eliding Hebrew and Arabic also have below-average character counts. Meanwhile, the Wamma language of Benin stands out for getting an unusual amount of value-per-character out of the Latin alphabet.
Entropy of languages
But the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is just one text, written in a specific style, and then translated by specific people who each made their own choices. And character count alone doesn't give much insight into the speed at which a writing system might be used to communicate in the real world, especially when you add performance-enhancing software into the mix.
As software gets better at guessing the words users are looking for before they even get to them, there's another variable in typing efficiency that could be as important as a language's concision: its innate predictability. [Related: Adding Additional Languages to an Android Tablet]
Languages vary both by the number of words in everyday circulation and by the range of permissible sequences for arranging those words. These features contribute to what linguists and information theorists call a language's entropy, where highly predictable languages are said to have low entropy and vice versa.
Generally speaking, the lower a language's entropy is, the easier it should be to conquer with effective predictive input software, according to Steven Piantadosi, head of the University of Rochester's Computation and Language Lab.
In a study published in 2011 in the online journal PLOS ONE, Marcelo Montemurro of the University of Manchester and a colleague estimated entropy values for groups of texts from eight languages, including English, French, German, Finnish, Tagalog, Chinese, Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Among these, Sumerian showed the lowest entropy, followed by Egyptian, Tagalog and Chinese, suggesting that ancient Sumerian and Egyptian writing systems might make for fast typing if anyone cared to use them.
But Piantadosi cautions that comparing entropy across languages is not easy.
"There is one big complication, which is that the methods we use to estimate entropy may not be 'fair' across languages,"he wrote in an email to LiveScience.
While a model that predicts the probability of a word based on the word immediately preceding it might work for some languages (i.e., what’s the probability that the word "and"will be followed by the word "sour", other languages might be bettersuited to a model that instead makes a guess based on the previous two words (i.e., what's the probability that the words "sweet and"will be followed by the word "sour", or other systems entirely.
Playing the Shannon Game
The one predictive model that suits every language? The brain of a native speaker.
"One way to get around this problem is to use a psychological notion of predictability—have people
guess the next word,"wrote Piantadosi. "[This method] almost certainly reflects a closer estimate to the 'true' predictability of a language."
There's a name for this type of guessing game, where players guess words or letters based on those that precede them in a sequence. It's called the Shannon Game, after mathematician Claude Shannon, considered to be the father of information theory.
Until speakers of the world's languages put in some hard hours playing the Shannon Game and produce accurate estimates for the entropies of their native tongues, the question of which language types the fastest is still anybody's
naijafavor..nl/2016/08/if-you-want-to-save-space-write-in.html?m=1

Facebook recently completed its first test flight of a solar-powered drone that is designed to beam down internet access to remote areas of the world.
The Aquila drone is being developed to broaden the scope of internet connectivity around the globe. "New technologies like Aquila have the potential to bring access, voice and opportunity to billions of people around the world, and do so faster and more cost-effectively than has ever been possible before," Jay Parikh, global head of engineering and infrastructure at Facebook, wrote in a blog post about the project .
When testing is finished, the autonomous aircraft will be able to circle a region measuring up to 60 miles (96.6 kilometers) in diameter, while using laser communications and millimeter wave systems (extremely high-frequency radio waves) to send connectivity down from an altitude of more than 60,000 feet (18,288 meters).
The huge unmanned airplane has a wingspan larger than a Boeing 737 airliner, but weighs hundreds of times less (about one-third of an electric car), according to Facebook, because of its carbon-fiber frame. In fact, half of Aquila's mass is made up of batteries, which enable the solar-powered plane to fly during the day and night.
"Aquila is designed to be hyper efficient, so it can fly for up to three months at a time," Parikh wrote. "The aircraft has the wingspan of an airliner, but at cruising speed it will consume only 5,000 watts — the same amount as three hair dryers, or a high-end microwave."
The recent test flight was the first for the full-scale drone, as previous tests used a one-fifth scale version of Aquila, according to the social media giant. Facebook said it plans to push Aquila to the limits in a lengthy series of tests over the coming months and years.
During the low-altitude test flight, Aquila flew for more than 90 minutes, which was three times longer than Facebook had planned. The flight's success included performance verifications of the drone's aerodynamics, batteries, control systems and crew training.
"In our next tests, we will fly Aquila faster, higher and longer, eventually taking it above 60,000 feet," Parikh wrote. "Each test will help us learn and move faster toward our goal."
There is still a long road ahead as the social media company continues to test its internet-delivery drone.
The current world record for solar-powered unmanned flight stands at two weeks, set by by defense technology company Qinetiq's Zephyr plane in 2010, according to the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI) . To reach Aquila's goal of delivering internet connectivity for up to three months at a time, Facebook said it will require significant advancements in science and engineering.
"It will also require us to work closely with operators, governments and other partners to deploy these aircraft in the regions where they'll be most effective," Parikh said.
naijafavor..nl/2016/07/facebooks-internet-delivery-drone.html?m=1

You may have read that having a male brain will earn you more money . Or maybe that female brains are
better at multitasking .
But there is no such thing as a female or male brain, according to the first search for sex differences across the entire human brain. It reveals that most people have a mix of male and female brain features. And it also supports the idea that gender is non-binary, and that gender classifications in many situations are meaningless.
“This evidence that human brains cannot be categorised into two distinct classes is new, convincing, and somehow radical,” says Anelis Kaiser at the University of Bern, Switzerland.
The idea that people have either a “female” or “male” brain is an old one, says Daphna Joel at Tel Aviv University in Israel. “The theory goes that once a fetus develops testicles, they secrete testosterone which masculinises the brain,” she says. “If that were true, there would be two types of brain.”
To test the theory, Joel and her colleagues looked for differences in brain scans taken from 1400 people aged between 13 and 85. The team looked for variations in the size of brain regions as well as the connections between them. In total, the group identified 29 brain regions that generally seem to be different sizes in self-identified males and females. These include the hippocampus, which is involved in memory, and the inferior frontal gyrus , which is thought to play a role in risk aversion.
When the group looked at each individual brain scan, however, they found that very few people had all of the brain features they might be expected to have, based on their sex. Across the sample, between 0 and 8 per cent of people had “all-male” or “all-female” brains, depending on the definition. “Most people are in the middle,” says Joel.
This means that, averaged across many people, sex differences in brain structure do exist, but an individual brain is likely to be just that: individual, with a mix of features. “There are not two types of brain,” says Joel.
Spatial awareness
Although the team only looked at brain structure, and not function, their findings suggest that we all lie along a continuum of what are traditionally viewed as male and female characteristics. “The study is very helpful in providing biological support for something that we’ve known for some time – that gender isn’t binary,” says Meg John Barker , a psychologist at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK.
The findings will still come as a surprise to many, including scientists, says Bruce McEwen at the Rockefeller University in New York. “We are beginning to realise the complexity of what we have traditionally understood to be ‘male’ and ‘female’, and this study is the first step in that direction,” he says. “I think it will change peoples’ minds.”
Markus Hausmann at Durham University, UK, isn’t surprised by the findings, however. He has been studying sex differences in cognition, such as whether men, as commonly believed, really do have better spatial awareness than women.
“Across all kinds of spatial skills, we find very, very few that are sensitive to sex,” says Hausmann. “We have also identified spatial problems where women outperform men – the black-and-white idea of a male or female brain is clearly too simple.”
Cultural expectations
Despite persisting stereotypes , girls are no worse than boys at science and maths subjects, either.
“People get wedded to the idea that being male or female is highly predictive of having different aptitudes or career choices,” says Margaret McCarthy, who studies brain sex differences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. “This study fights against the idea that these outcomes are based on biological differences, as opposed to cultural expectations.” Other body systems are also often wrongly considered to be either male or female, says Joel.
Alexandra Kautzky-Willer , head of the Gender Medicine Unit at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria, agrees that things aren’t so simple. “There are differences between men and women when you look in large groups, and these are important for diagnosis and treatment,” she says. “But there are always more differences within genders. We always need to look at culture, environment, education and a person’s role in society,” she says.
If a neuroscientist was given someone’s brain without their body or any additional information, they would still probably be able to guess if it had belonged to a man or a woman. Men’s brains are larger, for example, and are likely to have a larger number of “male” features overall. But the new findings suggest that it is impossible to predict what mix of brain features a person is likely to have based on their sex alone.
Genderless future
Joel envisions a future in which individuals are not so routinely classified based on gender alone. “We separate girls and boys, men and women all the time,” she says. “It’s wrong, not just politically, but scientifically – everyone is different.”
But other scientists contacted by New Scientist don’t think that will ever be possible – as a sexually reproductive species, identifying a person’s biological sex will always be of paramount importance to us, they say.
Even so, Joel’s findings can be used to help many people understand the non-binary nature of gender, says Barker. After all, some people don’t identify as either male or female, and others feel their gender identity shift over time. “It’s a shame that people’s experience alone isn’t enough for us to recognise as a society that non-binary gender is legitimate.”
“We need to start thinking a lot more carefully about how much weight we give to gender as a defining feature of human beings, and stop asking for it in situations where it simply isn’t relevant,” says Barker.
naijafavor..nl/2016/07/scans-prove-theres-no-such-thing-as.html?m=1

Brig-General E. A. Ransome-Kuti has petitioned the Minister of Defence, alleging that other alleged subordinate officers in the Multi-National Joint Task Force, MNJTF, charged and tried alongside with him for the same offences were discharged and acquitted, whereas he was unreasonably convicted by the Special Court-Martial.

Mr Femi Falana, SAN, counsel to General Ransome-Kuti, in the petition, said: “We want to observe that the conviction and sentence passed on our client by the SCM are fundamentally wrong, unjust and illogical because the discharge and acquittal of our client on the charge of cowardly behaviour which was the tripod on which the charge of failure to perform military duty and miscellaneous offences relating to property rested, ought to have brought the whole trial to an end.

“This is because it was the dislodgement of MNJTF from Baga, Borno State, that brought the two charges of failure to perform military duty and miscellaneous offences relating to property to life. It is therefore our contention that the court having ruled that the withdrawal from Baga was legally justified, ought to have discharged and acquitted our client on the remaining charges as well.

“The obvious fact is that if troops had not withdrawn from Baga, no service property would have been abandoned and the allegation of failure to perform military duty by failing to co-ordinate troops and assets of HQ MNJTF to repel the Boko Haram terrorists attack on HQ MNJTF would not have arisen.

“It was very clear from the preponderance of evidence adduced during the trial by the prosecution and defence witnesses that HQ MNJTF Baga lacked adequate weapons to repel the attack. Thus, the abandonment of the location after a fierce resistance by troops for several hours before their eventual withdrawal was not intentional. It was a decision taken when it became obvious that no further efforts could prevent the place from falling.”
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Relax and have fun with these pics
Chelsea fans i dont mean harm o
See more at http://naijafavor..com.ng/

LAGOS — Inflationary pressure which abated in October appeared to have resurfaced, going by the latest reports from the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS.

In the report released, yesterday, the Consumer Price Index, CPI, which measures inflation, inched higher in last month with the headline index increasing by 9.4 per cent year-on-year, against 9.3 per cent recorded in October.


According to NBS, the index was driven in part by higher prices within the food and non-alcoholic beverages division of the index as well as increases in the transportation division as a result of shortages in Premium Motor Sprit, PMS, popularly known as petrol, coupled with the spill-over effect impacting transportation of people and goods across the country.

“Food prices as measured by the food sub-index also increased at higher pace in November,” the report stated.

Increases in the “All Items less Farm Produce” or core sub-index rose at the same rate for the second consecutive month at 8.7 per cent, as rates have slowed or held steady for a quarter.Food sub-index increased to 10.3 per cent year-on-year during the month, while all major food groups which contribute to the food sub-index increased at a faster pace during the month with the exception of the fruits group which has been trending lower since June this year.

The core sub-index was moderated by slower increases in multiple divisions such as clothing and footwear; housing and water, electricity, gas and other fuels; and furnishings & household equipment, maintenance among others.

On a month-on-month basis, the Headline Index as well as the food and core sub-indices all increased at a faster pace in November.

Also, the urban index grew at the same pace as recorded in October; at 9.4 per cent year-on-year while the rural index edged higher to 9.3 per cent in November from 9.2 per cent in October. On a month-on-month basis, both the urban and rural indices increased at the same pace, both increasing at 0.7 per cent in November.

The percentage change in the average composite CPI for the 12-month period ending in November 2015 over the average of the CPI for the previous 12-month period was 8.9 per cent, marginally higher from 8.8 per cent recorded in October.

Food prices as observed by the food sub-index increased to the highest rate recorded this year. Prices increased by 10.3 per cent year-on-year in November, 0.2 percentage points higher than rates recorded in October. The index was pushed higher as a result of faster increases in the fish, bread and cereals; vegetable and meat groups.

Unemployment’ll reduce after passage of 2016 budget —Buhari

Meanwhile, President Mohammadu Buhari, yesterday, stated that the problem of youth unemployment bedevilling the country would become history after the passage of 2016 national budget

President Buhari spoke at a dinner he organised in honour of the visiting Alumni Association of the Indian Defence Services Staff College,DSSC, Wellingon, led by the Indian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Mr. Ghanashyam. The delegation included a number of retired Indian army generals who were course-mates of the President.

Lamenting that 60 per cent of the country’s youth population was unemployed, the President said: “We will sit down to see how we can rehabilitate industries. We will do this in order to clear the problem of unemployment. This is extremely dangerous for our country. We are meeting after the budget to see how to revive industry and secure the economy.”

The President also explained that the insecurity in the North-East, abduction for ransom in the South and the sabotage of the oil industry in the delta region have connection with poverty and unemployment.

“We are meeting after the budget to see how to revive industry and secure the economy,” he further assured.
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Parasitic worms leave millions of victims paralyzed, epileptic, or worse. So why isn’t anyone mobilizing to eradicate them?
Theodore Nash sees only a few dozen patients a year in his clinic at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. That’s pretty small as medical practices go, but what his patients lack in number they make up for in the intensity of their symptoms. Some fall into comas. Some are paralyzed down one side of their body. Others can’t walk a straight line. Still others come to Nash partially blind, or with so much fluid in their brain that they need shunts implanted to relieve the pressure. Some lose the ability to speak; many fall into violent seizures.

Underneath this panoply of symptoms is the same cause, captured in the MRI scans that Nash takes of his patients’ brains. Each brain contains one or more whitish blobs. You might guess that these are tumors. But Nash knows the blobs are not made of the patient’s own cells. They are tapeworms. Aliens.

A blob in the brain is not the image most people have when someone mentions tapeworms. These parasitic worms are best known in their adult stage, when they live in people’s intestines and their ribbon-shaped bodies can grow as long as 21 feet. But that’s just one stage in the animal’s life cycle. Before they become adults, tapeworms spend time as larvae in large cysts. And those cysts can end up in people’s brains, causing a disease known as neurocysticercosis.

“Nobody knows exactly how many people there are with it in the United States,” says Nash, who is the chief of the Gastrointestinal Parasites Section at NIH. His best estimate is 1,500 to 2,000. Worldwide, the numbers are vastly higher, though estimates on a global scale are even harder to make because neurocysticercosis is most common in poor places that lack good public-health systems. “Minimally there are 5 million cases of epilepsy from neurocysticercosis,” Nash says.

He puts a heavy emphasis on minimally. Even in developed nations, figuring out just how many people have the illness is difficult because it is easy to mistake the effects of a tapeworm for a variety of brain disorders. The clearest proof is the ghostly image of a cyst in a brain scan, along with the presence of antibodies against tapeworms.

The closer scientists look at the epidemiology of the disease, the worse it becomes. Nash and other neurocysticercosis experts have been traveling through Latin America with CT scanners and blood tests to survey populations. In one study in Peru, researchers found 37 percent of people showed signs of having been infected at some point. Earlier this spring, Nash and colleagues published a review of the scientific literature and concluded that somewhere between 11 million and 29 million people have neurocysticercosis in Latin America alone. Tapeworms are also common in other regions of the world, such as Africa and Asia. “Neurocysticercosis is a very important disease worldwide,” Nash says.

Cyst Attack 

The alarming illness occurs when tapeworm larvae lose their way. Normally,Taenia solium has a life cycle that takes it from pigs to humans and back to pigs again. Adult tapeworms, living in the intestines of humans, produce up to 50,000 eggs apiece. The eggs are shed in the infected person’s feces. Pigs swallow these eggs accidentally as they rummage for food on the ground. When the parasite eggs reach a pig’s stomach, larvae hatch and burrow their way into the animal’s bloodstream. Eventually they end up lodged in small blood vessels, typically in the animal’s muscles. There they form cysts and wait until their host is eaten by a human. (Pork has to be undercooked for the tapeworms to complete their journey.)

But sometimes tapeworms take a wrong turn. Instead of going into a pig, the eggs end up in a human. This can occur if someone shedding tapeworm eggs contaminates food that other people then eat. When the egg hatches, the confused larva does not develop into an adult in the human’s intestines. Instead, it acts as it would inside a pig. It burrows into the person’s bloodstream and gets swept through the body. Often those parasites end up in the brain, where they form cysts.

The tapeworm larvae often get stuck in ventricles, or fluid-filled cavities, in the brain, sprouting grapelike extensions. In this way the worm actively cloaks itself from immune cells. Protected and well fed, its cysts can thrive there for years.

As a tapeworm cyst grows, it may push against a region of the brain and disrupt its function. It may get stuck in a passageway, damming the flow of cerebrospinal fluid. This impasse can cause hydrocephalus, or water on the brain, along with dangerously high pressure. A resulting brain hernia can result in stupor, coma, or death.

If a tapeworm cyst doesn’t cause big troubles, it may go unnoticed for its entire life. Eventually a tapeworm cyst that can’t move on to its adult stage will die; this signals the host’s immune system, eliciting a powerful attack and bringing its covert deception to an end. In many cases, the immune cells swiftly annihilate the revealed cyst, but often damage occurs. The immune system’s attack on the cyst can cause the surrounding brain tissue to swell with inflammation. For reasons unknown, a calcified cyst can keep triggering these immune reactions for years after the parasite’s death.

Although any cyst in a susceptible area of the brain can cause seizures, those lodged near regions that issue commands to muscles can trigger violent convulsions. One of Nash’s patients suffered from tapeworm cysts that twisted around his brain stem. After the tapeworms died, the inflammation that followed was so severe it put the man in a coma.

“Thirty or 40 years ago, these patients just died. Surgeons would go in and see this mess and couldn’t do much,” Nash says. Fortunately, the situation is improving. Even his comatose patient woke up and, after a few years of off-and-on treatment, completely recovered. “Now the guy is doing quite well.”

Breaking the Cycle

A great step forward came in the mid-1980s when praziquantel, the first drug able to kill tapeworm larvae in the brain, became widely available. But praziquantel proved too effective. It not only kills tapeworms but also triggers an immune reaction that causes brain swelling. “Paradoxically, we produce the disease we want to treat,” Nash says.

Over the years Nash and others refined the treatment by combining praziquantel with other drugs that tamp down the immune system. It is far from a perfect solution, though. Sometimes the immune system still overreacts, requiring years of care for seizures and other symptoms. And immune-suppressant drugs like steroids have side effects of their own.

The hunt for better drugs to fight neurocysticercosis is not an easy process. The best way to test potential medicines on tapeworms is to get living cysts out of infected pigs. Nash and his colleagues recently set up a lab in Peru, where infected pigs are abundant, to do just that.

Although finding a better cure is important, Nash is more interested in preventing tapeworms from getting into human brains in the first place by breaking their life cycle. A favored strategy is identifying people who have adult tapeworms in their bodies and giving them drugs to kill the parasites. It is also possible to vaccinate pigs so that they destroy tapeworm eggs as soon as they ingest them.

None of this is rocket science—which makes Nash all the more frustrated that so little is being done. “I see this as a disease that can be treated and prevented,” he says. But there are precious few resources available for treatment and little recognition of the problem. “All of this seems to be very feasible, but nobody wants to do anything about it.”
brainworms
A human brain overrun with cysts from Taenia solium, a tapeworm that normally inhabits the muscles of pigs.
Courtesy of Theodore E. Nash , M.D.
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ONE of the greatest problems confronting the world today, especially Nigeria is unemployment. For example in Nigeria, every
year the various universities in the country churn out graduates to chase the few jobs available, and when they don’t get any, they are left with no choice than to join the legions already in the unemployment market. Its negative effects on the globe is worrisome, that is why all efforts are geared towards finding a solution.
These and some other related issues are what the duo of Olugbenga Seyi Hodonu, a legal practitioner with a passion for positive change and Kester Audu, a human resource consultant addressed in their new book, entitled Use the L.I.F.T.:It has also been revealed that the major cause of unemployment is over reliance on paid jobs, which is an off short of the career they choose while in School. How do we come out of this mess, how can the youth know what to do, the career to choose and how one can discover and hold his field, delve into fortunes, and drive yourself to fulfillment.
Proven Techniques for Choosing and Excelling in a Career Path. In the 142 pages book published by Ink-spire Ventures Ltd, Lagos, the authors takes the reader on a step by step approach that will aid them in choosing their dream career and help them in getting out the best from their career and also become their own master.
Essentialprinciples
Divided in six chapters, the duo chapter by chapter implores the youths to think about the direction of their life as it relates to their career path especially with so many choices on hand? It features the following: Structured tools, techniques, and essential principles necessary for professional and project success ,Exploration of various career options and skills for attaining your summit ,Tested principles for running your own business ,Inspiring words from leading lights of various fields and Career self-assessment questions and many inspiring subjects.
In chapter one titled, The Big Career L.F.F.T, the book introduces all to career and its importance. Here it posits that choosing a career is one of the biggest decisions one will ever make, as your career becomes part of who you are in no time. But before buying into a career path, it is essential you consider how fitting the career you are about picking will be as there are so many things that can influence man’s action towards his choice of occupation or career.
The book evidently carved out four key notes, Lustre, Interests, Footholds and Targets. These four points will help you to plan for the future you desire, by figuring out the career that is best for you, in addition to making you know more about yourself.
Chapter 2, titled Many floors ahead, gives an overview of various career paths. Here they takes the reader to a tour or exploration of different career options available to discover your best choice. While chapter 3 states x-rays the importance having certain kits while on board the lift as you cannot do without it.
Chapter four, titled Learning opportunities implores the reader to seize every opportunity as you can access your career path from various learning ends or routes, so as you journey along these routes, you are bound to pass through several scenes and phases.
In chapter five titled Running your own business, the book addresses the important topic of how to become your own boss by creating a job for yourself and others. How to start the plan, the ideas required and other factors were discussed. Finally, the authors concludes by pointing out that the reader must have the big picture of where he/she is going and work towards that.
The book,Use the L.I.F.T. is a helpful starting point for self-analysis, a book that will introduce you to yourself and take you beyond yourself. Apart from providing informed advice and choices on career planning and employment, it will challenge your thoughts or stimulate your thinking and lead you to productivity.
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Cameroon said that schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram militants were not among a group of 900 hostages liberated by its army. The announcement comes as hopes were raised following the release of some hostages on Dec.4 in Cameroon.
“The people that were freed are just villagers, the schoolgirls who are missing are not amongst the group,” Information Minister Issa Bakari told newsmen by telephone.
The freed hostages were driven in crowded open-topped trucks to the town of Maroua and given food and water by regional officials.
It would be recalled that Boko Haram seized about 200 schoolgirls in April 2014, from their dormitories in the town of Chibok, the kidnapping stirred international outrage.
Efforts to track them down have proved fruitless, in part because they have probably been split up into small groups and settled with families in villages across a wider area of terrain, according to analysts. Cameroon is part of an 8,700-strong task force including troops from Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Benin combating Boko Haram
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Usually when you need a good scare, you just check out your credit card statement to see how much you spent last month.

But if you're really out to prove you have, like the awesome '80s t-shirt line, no fear, well, try sleeping in a haunted hotel. And we don't mean the Casper-the-ghost kind. We're talking Vigo the Carpathian, The Ring kinda ghost scares.

From murderous wives to moaning soldiers, these creepy cribs will keep you up all night. And not in the good way

Let’s start with the obvious:
1 The Stanley Hotel inspired Stephen King’s The Shining. And those creepy kids in the movie can allegedly be heard giggling and running amok on the fourth floor, especially around room 418.

Hotel founder and inventor of Stanley Steamer automobiles (not the steam cleaning dudes), F. O. Stanley, and his wife are often seen passing through the lobby, or playing piano in the music room, and a handful of former employees are said to haunt their former posts. The ghost of a housekeeper who died on the grounds allegedly roams around room 217, for example. The hotel plays the Stanley Kubrick film version of The Shining on loop on one of its cable channels, and fittingly, also offers ghost tours.


2 The 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa
Eureka Springs, AR
Built in 1886 and part of the Historic Hotels of America Association, this extravagant property in the Ozarks claims to be the most haunted hotel in the country. Originally a luxury hotel and spa, it went bankrupt and re-opened as the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women in 1908, before becoming a fake cancer hospital. That's when things got creepy.

Founder Dr. Norman Baker, a man with no medical training, used the hospital as a front to experiment on humans -- alive and dead. He dispensed useless treatments to the living while raking in dough from their families. Eventually, he was sent to jail for fraud. Now, his experiments haunt the grounds, and the apparitions include Dr. Baker himself; a stonemason that fell off the roof and died; a nurse pushing a gurney; Theodora, a cancer patient; and a former student who committed suicide. Of course, there are ghost tours as well, which include a midnight visit to the morgue.


3 Langham Hotel
London, England
Said to be England’s first “grand hotel”, the five-star Langham Hotel has hosted distinguished guests like Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain. But it's the spooky stuff that's accumulated over 149 years that puts the hotel on the list, including a German prince who leapt to his death from a window before WWI, and a man who killed his wife and then himself on their honeymoon. Other spotted spirits include Napoleon III, who spent some of his exile in the Langham, a man with a bloody gash on his face, and various butlers and footmen. Room 333 is said to be the most haunted of all the rooms in London's most haunted hotel.



4 Myrtles Plantation
St. Francisville, LA
This stately home is said to have been built on an ancient Native American burial ground, which pretty much never works out. And apparently 10 murders were committed within the hotel's walls since the 1700s, the most well-known of which was William Drew Winter, who was shot on the porch and managed to crawl up 17 stairs before dying. He can occasionally still be seen doing today, according to legend.

Now, no fewer than 12 ghosts call the B&B home. There’s the lady with the curly hair; the Native American woman; the girl who shows up only before thunderstorms; the children playing on the porch; and Chloe, the slave girl who was hanged by fellow slaves after poisoning the house mistress and her two children. There are also strange noises, blood stains that won't disappear, cold spots, footsteps, and randomly appearing handprints. Basically, all the vagaries of a daycare, except from ghosts and not toddlers.


5 Hotel Roosevelt
Los Angeles, CA
In life, Marilyn Monroe spent two years at this landmark hotel. In death, she wanders about the premises, dancing in the ballroom or staring at herself in the mirror of her favorite room, number 229. She’s not alone, though. Apparently the ghosts of Carole Lombard and Errol Flynn hang out, too, and Montgomery Clift is regularly heard playing his trumpet from room 928, where he stayed while filming From Here to Eternity. Which is ironic, considering he basically checked in for all of eternity.


6 Russell Hotel
Sydney, Australia
Sure, a continent formerly populated by convicts would be rife with tales of murder, but this hotel in particular is said to be frequented by spirits of ill repute. As in, prostitute ghosts.

Located in The Rocks, Sydney's oldest neighborhood and once a seedy slum full of crime, the hotel used to be a sailor’s hostel. Room 8 is said to be haunted by the spirit of a colonial-era sailor who either wanders the halls or stands still and stares at you while you sleep. Other sightings include more seamen and a few prostitutes. Make your own joke there. And like any business-minded establishment, the hotel’s also pimping out its ghosts with tours.


7 Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast
Fall River, MA
Nothing like a good axe murder to get those spirits sighted. Ever heard the ol’ nursery rhyme “Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, gave her father 41”? No? Well, that’s what allegedly happened here in 1892, and now the crime scene is a B&B. Imagine if they did that at OJ's ex-wife's house. Not that OJ did it, or anything.

It’s said that Lizzie, a spinster, murdered her stepmother in cold blood with an axe, and her father for having the gall to remarry. Both victims have allegedly made appearances since. And rather than going with anonymous landscapes or flowers, the inn uses crime scene photos for décor.


8 Hotel Provincial
New Orleans, LA
The ghosts of Confederate soldiers allegedly haunt this hotel, which was a hospital during the Civil War. Many a wounded soldier have been seen shuffling down the halls, moaning for help, and guests have reported gruesome scenes of bloody soldiers lying in rooms, groaning in agony. And it's not even from anyone accidentally leaving Lifetime on the TV.

In building 500's room A, a lovesick soldier who loves rock reportedly changes the radio to listen to WTIX-FM 94.3, an oldies rock station. He’s been spotted in his 1930s military garb, complete with medals, and was even recorded during a séance as saying "I need to leave. She doesn't love me, she loves you."


9 Skirrid Mountain Inn
Monmouthshire, Wales
This hotel is one of the oldest pubs in Wales, dating back to 1100, and the first floor is said to have been used as a Court of Law during the Welsh revolt and beyond, when almost 180 men were sentenced to death by "Hanging" Judge Jeffreys. For some reason the hangings were executed right from the beams of the inn itself, leaving some real "Brooks-was-here" bad karma. Judge Jeffreys is said to roam the inn looking for people to condemn, and guests claim to have felt ropes tightening around their necks while they slept, with some even boasting visible marks days later. Very BDSM, if you're into that sort of thing.


10 Hotel Burchianti
Florence, Italy
A smorgasbord of spirits refuse to check out here, from a ghostly child skipping down corridors, to a woman knitting in a chair, to a maid that just won't quit. Guests have reported spectral sightings and random chills, as well as the feeling of being watched, grabbed, and of an icy breath sliding down their necks. Some have even claimed to see the apparition of a pink, transparent man, which may or may not be Benito Mussolini, as the fascist leader stayed at the hotel in the past.

11 Ballygally Castle Hotel
Ballygally, Northern Ireland
This former castle is haunted by Isobella Shaw, lady of the castle in 1625. Legend has it Lord Shaw locked her into a room and starved her after she gave birth to a daughter instead of a male heir, and Lady Shaw died trying to escape. It's kinda like the inverse of Rapunzel, or something.

Today, more than 400 years later, she still roams the premises in search of the child she never got to meet. Her room has been recreated and turned into “The Ghost Room”, which is open to visitors.

12 Toftaholm Herrgård
Lagan, Sweden
Unrequited love makes for epic tragedies and insistent ghosts. This lavish former country home of a baron is haunted by a peasant boy who fell in love with the baron’s daughter. Upon being discovered with said boy, she was forced into an arranged marriage with someone else. Her lover consequently hanged himself in room 324 the day of the wedding, and still mopes around in hopes of winning her over. Pretty sure dying isn't a good way to actually win someone's love, but whatever.

13 Elvey Farm
Pluckley, England
Pluckley is the “most haunted village in England”, at least according to the Guinness World Records. Elvey Farm, a dairy farm built in 1406 and turned B&B in the 80s, sits at the center of all things supernatural in Pluckley; ergo, it must be the most haunted hotel in England.

Robert Du Bois, who stabbed himself to death, claims the guest lounge as his favorite haunt, while farmer Edward Brett, who shot himself in 1900, has staked his territory in the former dairy, his last words of "I will do it" echoing through the room. And he sure did it. There’s also an unknown man-ghost in military garb squatting in the barn (said to look like Stalin), the so-called Red Lady bemoaning her dead child in the graveyard, and the White Lady who haunts the church. Very Reservoir Dogs ghosts, these ones.
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There may be no better way to capture the state of the technology industry than to borrow Charles Dickens' famous opening from A Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

It never has been a better time to launch new offerings via the cloud. However, the availability of low-cost computing power combined with open source software development resources has lowered the barriers to entry in every market and created unprecedented competitive challenges as customer expectations continue to rise.
All of these trends have impacted the nature of IT and how organizations leverage it.
THINKstrategies believes the following macro-market trends will reshape further the priorities and responsibilities of IT in 2016.
"Business investment across the U.S. is fizzling out." That's the opening line of a recent Wall Street Journalarticle about the growing apprehension among corporate executives regarding the state of the global economy.
Given these rising concerns, you can expect IT capital spending to be capped in 2016. This means a greater reliance on lower-cost cloud services, including Software as a Service applications and Infrastructure as a Service computing power and storage.
However, it also means a more conservative approach toward major IT investments to support strategic corporate initiatives. The initiatives themselves will swing back toward reducing operating costs instead of boosting top-line sales like we've seen over the past few years.
As a result, doing more with less will once again become the mantra of most IT departments, and finding ways to help streamline corporate operations will be their primary objective in 2016.
Escalating Cybersecurity and Terror Threats

We are, unfortunately, living in an increasingly dangerous world in which we are all at risk of a widening array of physical and virtual attacks. Real-world terrorist acts and cyberthreats are becoming more prevalent and severe.
As a consequence, a growing proportion of the IT budget will be dedicated to physical and cybersecurity measures. Every business will need to invest more heavily in technology that provides greater security in their real-world operations.
More sophisticated access controls, facility monitoring and even personnel tracking will become a priority in the coming year to mitigate the risks of violent assaults in office buildings, retail outlets, manufacturing plants, and other places where employees and customers congregate.
Deploying IP-based surveillance cameras and a new generation of sensors inside and outside buildings, for instance, no longer will be a nice-to-have security element, but will become a must-have part of nearly every organization's physical security scheme.
It is no longer a question of if an organization's operations and associated data is going to be hacked, but when the inevitable attack will occur and how extensive it will be. With the advent of the Internet of Things, a new generation of connected products and broader set of powered operations will become vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Therefore, organizations of all sizes -- and large-scale enterprises in particular -- will have to make even more significant investments in sophisticated security systems and staff to counteract these threats.
Given the magnitude of the cybersecurity challenge, many IT organizations will need to enlist the help of managed security service providers to augment their internal cybersecurity capabilities.
IoT and Digital Marketing Convergence

While it seemed like everyone was talking about the transformative power of IoT and the digital revolution to change the way products are designed and customers are engaged, only a handful of companies made a significant push in this direction during the past year.
The good news is that a growing number of IoT success stories are demonstrating the tangible benefits of connected products and services.
However, most organizations were overwhelmed by the grandiose IoT ideas and unsure how to overcome the operational challenges associated with capitalizing on the business opportunities created by IoT and digital marketing programs.
Escalating competitive pressures, combined with rising customer expectations, will force more companies to move forward with IoT and digital marketing initiatives. However, growing economic uncertainly will compel them to be more limited efforts.
Rather than agree on an all-encompassing IoT/digital strategy and long-term plan, most IT organizations will adopt a more practical approach aimed at quickly testing the technologies necessary to support a series of narrowly targeted projects. THINKstrategies refers to this tactic as "inverting the long tail."
IT organizations will play a key role in guiding these initiatives in 2016. They will determine what's technologically feasible, select the right solutions to support the projects, measure their success, and determine how to scale IoT and digital marketing programs.
IT will become involved in the product development process, and will be called on to work with business counterparts to determine how to properly capture, analyze and act upon the data the IoT and digital marketing projects generate.
Hybrid Cloud Management

IoT and digital marketing programs wouldn't be possible without the elastic storage, universal connectivity and economies of scale of the cloud. However, it is clear that enterprises won't be swapping out all their existing IT operations with virtual cloud resources. Instead, they will need to tap a variety of cloud resources to meet their specific needs.
Therefore, IT organizations must become adept at contracting for specialized cloud services, configuring them to interoperate with their on-premises systems and software, and administering them to optimize their performance and value.
Many IT organizations will have to admit that they don't have adequate skills or resources to manage their hybrid cloud environments on their own. They will need to team with managed cloud service providers that can assume some of the responsibilities.
Bottom line: As a result of the rising macro-market pressures, IT will continue to shift its focus in 2016 from managing its own physical assets to support the needs of its internal employees and operations to managing a wider range of virtual resources to better serve its external customers and partners.
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A former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, yesterday, expressed frustration with the inability of Nigeria to investigate and punish all who were implicated in the Halliburton bribery case.

Ribadu, who bared his mind in Abuja, regretted that none of the top Nigerian culprits implicated in the $1.5 billion bribery scandal had been questioned and jailed in Nigeria while others from other countries were already serving various jail terms.

Of the amount involved, top Nigerians got a total of $184 million within 10 years from an Italian firm that got a $6 billion gas project job in Nigeria.

The case cost Halliburton $1.5 billion in fines in the United States.

Ribadu said the Halliburton scandal presented a unique corruption case study in which “a gang of foreigners stole from Nigeria” through the $6 billion natural gas contract won by a consortium of four international companies.

He said: “I first got hint of the case in France. I got back home and tried to investigate the case but it was very difficult or probably impossible because the companies were not here in Nigeria, they didn’t have account there, the people were not there. They had left.

“I rushed back to Paris. I was in Paris many times. I put in a request letter but after a year of trying to get French authorities to help us, the investigating magistrate told me that they could not get anyone to translate my letter from English to French. I knew it was a hopeless case.”

According to Ribadu, after failing to get Italy and Japan to help, he opted to go to the United States even though Dick Cheney, the then US vice president, was on the board of Halliburton.

“The Department of Justice in the United States took up the case. They investigated and prosecuted the case. They placed a fine of over $1.5 billion on the company, the biggest in the world for corporate corruption.”

Ribadu explained that in the cases EFCC under his watch referred to US Department of Justice, including those of Siemens and Julius Berger, the US made over $3 billion in fines.

“But the sad aspect is this, in my own country, where the criminal activity took place, not a single person was made to face justice, especially after I was asked to leave my position. Sadly, Nigeria did not make a dollar out of it,” he said.

Ribadu also recounted his experience in investigating the renowned 419 kingpin, Emmanuel Nwude, chief executives of banks and the former Delta State governor, James Ibori, who is now serving jail term in the UK.

He said in spite of the challenges of fighting corruption in Nigeria, he was glad that Nigeria recovered more stolen money than any other country in the world and got many corrupt people convicted during his tenure.

Ribadu noted that the EFCC was successful because “we built strong networks globally, especially with the UK and the US.”

He said the EFCC’s approach of working with other law enforcement jurisdictions to tackle trans-border crimes led the UK in creating the Overseas Anti-corruption Unit. He urged other countries to follow that example.

According to Ribadu, despite the challenges and the dangers inherent in the job of fighting corruption, “it’s a war worth fighting.”

“The world has to unite so that there will be no safe haven for stolen money and no hiding place for corrupt people,” he added.

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Truecaller has announced that its community has reported 2 million spam calls in Nigeria, with a total of 120 000 spam and unwanted calls detected every day across the country.

Truecaller’s data highlights an issue that is becoming an increasing cause for concern in Nigeria as spammers become more adept at harassing and taking advantage of smartphone users in Nigeria.

“Thousands of smartphone users are the victims of spammers in Nigeria every day,” Husain Misherghi, VP of Growth and Partnerships for Truecaller, said, adding that, “You can protect yourself with Truecaller by reporting spam and unwanted numbers, and blocking them forever.

That information is listed in our database and we report it to Truecaller’s community of users, providing a safe and secure communication experience for all Nigerians with easy, hassle-free calls.”4


Close to 4 million Nigerians use Truecaller from among the global Truecaller community of over 200 million.

The innovative app enables users to block unwanted and spam calls they have reported to Truecaller, or receive assistance from the app’s database where spam numbers are listed and marked in red. To further protect smartphone users from spam, Truecaller has taken its cutting-edge technology to the next level with Truemessenger, an SMS replacement app that tells users who sent an SMS even if they are not in your contacts.

Truemessenger does for SMS what Truecaller has done for mobile phone calls – identifies incoming SMS, filters and blocks spam SMS, to keep our users’ inboxes safe and clean.
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There are no hard and fast rules to blogging, but here are a few handy hints:

1) "BREVITY IS THE SOUL OF WIT" (Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1603): Ideally, your blog should be about 350-600 words. If you're tackling an issue that absolutely demands more length, consider developing your ideas across a series of 2 or more blogs.

2) MAKE IT FRESH: A blog should be an original piece of writing.

3) TALK OPENLY: Blogs should express a personal opinion, or put forward a position; they are not meant to be impartial.

4) STEER AWAY FROM ‘PR SPEAK': Re-hashing a media release or policy statement for a blog is a bad idea.

5) NO TOPIC IS TOO SMALL: Some of the best blogs are those which illuminate a small facet of a bigger, more complicated, issue.

6) BE SPECIFIC: It is good practice to finish a blog with a question or invitation for comment.

7) ENGAGE WITH YOUR AUDIENCE: If people do honour your blog with a comment, take a few minutes to respond.

CREATE AWARENESS: Blogs are a great way to provide an informal introduction to more serious, extensive, drier research or material which can be included as a link or attachment at the end. This provides segue for people who want to learn more, and at the very least raises awareness in others.

9) ATTRIBUTE YOUR SOURCES: It is great to quote other people or sources in blogs, just make sure you reference them (embedding a hyperlink to the original source is best).

10) SELF-PROMOTE: Keep your intended audience in mind, and don't expect them to just stumble across your blog in the vast expanse of cyberspace once it is published. Send them a link and invite them to comment. Social media is fantastic for sharing your blog. Make sure you post it on your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages, or whatever other tool you use to stay connected.
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The N521bn approved by the National Assembly for subsidy payment to oil marketers will cover for the rest of the year, the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has said.

Mohammed, who spoke to journalists in Abuja on Wednesday, also declared that the current fuel crisis in the country would be over in a matter of days, adding that the vehicular queues at filling stations across the country would be a thing of the past.

He said, “We can confidently announce here today that the scarcity will end in a few days. Subsidy payment till the end of the year has been approved by the National Assembly.

“As you know, we can’t spend money without approval. We can assure you that we won’t be caught in this kind of situation again.”

The minister explained that the N521bn that had been approved by the National Assembly as part of the supplementary budget of N574.4bn would be enough to cover the fuel subsidy till the end of this year.

In another development, the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Mr. Paul Arkwright, has said that one of the objectives of his home government this year was to reduce the number of United Kingdom citizens and businesses falling victim to cybercrimes originating in Nigeria.

The envoy spoke at a workshop on cybercrime organised by the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisations and the Ministry of Communications in Abuja on Wednesday.

He said, “While tackling cybercrime remains an enormous challenge that requires the engagement of a range of stakeholders, we can build coalitions and take steps that can reduce the scope and scale of cybercrimes.

“One of the UK’s key objectives for Nigeria this year, as indeed has been for the last couple of years, is to reduce the number of the UK citizens and businesses failing victim of fraud and cybercrime originating in Nigeria.

“We recognised that this could only happen if there are adequate legal and institutional structures in place to help respond to the challenges.”

The Minister of Communications, Mr. Adebayo Shittu, said cyber security was extremely important in ensuring local, national and global security.
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HARMATHAN NATIONAL ANTHEM. Arise o cool dry breeze Harmathan call we obey To serve all wet things dry With wind & strength & cold The labour of umbrella past Shall not just be in vain To wash legs, better than bath some girls shall stop 2 rub white powder on face.
THE PLEDGE I plegde 2 harmathan my visitor To be heat free, dry and whitish To purchase vaseline without delay To defend her white nature And oppose dry lips & cold breeze So help me vaseline. http://naijafavor..com

The Nigerian Communications Commission has sharply reduced a hefty penalty slapped on South African telecoms giant MTN over unregistered SIM cards, the company said on Thursday.

The Commission is now looking for a fine of $3.4 billion (3.2 billion euros), down from an earlier $5.2 billion, after negotiations with the regulator, it said.

MTN was slapped with the hefty penalty in October after it missed a deadline to disconnect 5.1 million unregistered SIM cards.

The reduced fine has to be paid by December 31.

Africa’s largest mobile phone operator said in a statement is was “carefully considering” the revised fine by the NCC.

It said executive chairman Phuthuma Nhleko “will immediately and urgently re-engage with the Nigerian authorities before responding formally…to ensure the best outcome for the company, its stakeholders and the Nigerian authorities.”

“All factors having a bearing on the situation will be thoroughly and carefully considered before the company arrives at a final decision.”

The fine resulted in the resignation of the group’s chief executive Sifiso Dabengwa in November, after news of the penalty sent the firm’s share price plummeting.

Dabengwa has been replaced by Phuthuma Nhleko, the firm’s former chief executive who will hold the position for six months.

Meantime two senior executives at the company’s operation in Nigeria have stepped down, the firm announced.

MTN Nigeria’s CEO Michael Ikpoki and the head of regulatory and corporate affairs, Akinwale Goodluck “have tendered their resignations with immediate effect,” MTN said in a statement.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, is MTN group’s largest market where it had over 62.8 million subscribers by the second quarter of this year.

The NCC said registration of subscribers was made mandatory to ensure proper identification of users with their biometric data and in line with international best practice.

MTN operates in 22 countries in Africa
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