President Muhammadu Buhari congratulates
the General Overseer of the Redeemed
Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adejare
Adeboye, as he turns 74 years on March 2,
2016.

President Buhari believes the revered Christian
leader, who paid him a courtesy call at the
Presidential Villa on February 16, 2016 and
whom he had interacted with many times
before, epitomizes the virtues of honesty,
peace, patience, contentment, humility and
diligence, which are the trademarks of a good
believer.

As a Christian leader, the President commends
the relentless efforts, sacrifices and the grace
of God upon the life of the General Overseer,
who has over the years propagated the gospel
around the world, organized large gathering of
Christian worshipers and consistently
counselled leaders and their citizens on living
right before God.

Besides preaching the gospel, President
Buhari salutes the social and humanitarian
interventions of the RCCG leader in providing
health and educational services to
complement the efforts of governments.

The President prays that the Almighty God will
grant Pastor Adeboye long life and more
strength to carry on the good work.



www.silverbirdtv.com/religion/11479-pastor-adeboye-clocks-74-today-extolled-buhari

HungerBAD:
This story is confusing to me.

I give up.

Religion is the biggest scam that has ever
befallen mankind. Quote me anywhere.

A minor who who can easily be threatened,
brainwashed or jazzed willingly accepted to
marry her kidnapper? I want to believe something
else.

Ese Oruru, the teenager who was
abducted from her Bayelsa home and
moved to Kano for a forced marriage to
one Yunusa Yellow, has left Kano and is
on her way to the police headquarters in
Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, PREMIUM
TIMES can authoritatively report.

The spokesperson for the Zone 1 Police
Command, Rabilu Ringim, told a
PREMIUM TIMES reporter who visited
his office that a police team conveying
Miss Oruru to the police headquarters in
Abuja left Kano by road at 6 a.m. on
Tuesday.

The team, he said, comprised an
assistant commissioner of police and
other top ranking officers who were
travelling under tight security.

“They are on their way already, and the
parents are expected in Abuja today
where they would be reunited,” Mr.
Ringim said. “She is being taken to
Abuja based on the express instruction
of the IG.”

The police spokesperson said Miss Oruru
was taken for thorough medical check
late Monday night to enable her to
commence her journey back home early
on Tuesday morning.

Mr. Ringim also later told another
PREMIUM TIMES reporter on telephone
that the teenager indeed claimed she was
17 in several conversations with the
police.

He said she also claimed she feared for
her life if allowed to return to her
parents in Bayelsa, but that the Assistant
Inspector General of Police in charge of
the Zone, Shuaibu Gambo, assured that
no one would harm her.

Reports say Miss Oruru was abducted
from her Bayelsa home about eight
months ago, and her parents, after
trailing her to Kano, battled for months
to have her back. They did not succeed.

Her case however caught the attention of
the Nigerian authorities and citizens
after the PUNCH newspaper did a
detailed story on the matter on Sunday.

In an audio clip obtained exclusively by
PREMIUM TIMES on Monday, Miss Oruru
was heard telling a security official that
she was not abducted, and would like to
remain in Kano.

The police initially prevaricated in
taking a decision on her release based
on that claim, a development that irked
many Nigerians.

A number of human rights activists and
lawyers who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES
on Monday unanimously said Miss
Oruru should be reunited with her
parents without delay.

On Tuesday morning, a rights group, the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), called on Nigerian authorities to immediately commence the prosecution of Yunusa Yellow, the man who allegedly abducted the minor from her Bayelsa home, and took her to Kano for underage marriage.

In a statement Tuesday morning by its
Executive Director, Ishaq Akintola,
MURIC said Yunusa’s action “violated the
law and caused a Christian family to go
through a traumatic period.”

Mr Akintola, a professor, said the
alleged abductor should be charged to
court in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State
capital, and then before a Sharia court
in Kano if it is proven that he had canal
knowledge of the girl.



www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/199307-breaking-abducted-bayelsa-girl-leaves-kano-tight-security.html

Nasarawa State Governor, Tanko Al-Makura on Monday urged Nigerians to remain calm and not challenge President Muhammadu Buhari’s refusal to fulfill his government’s pledge of paying N5,000 to
unemployment citizens.

According to him, Buhari reserves the right to
change his mind or review the promise based
on prevailing realities in the country.

The President had at the weekend in Saudi
Arabia declared that the N5,000 stipend was
not on his priority list and that he would
rather channel resources into the building of
infrastructure, education, agriculture and
mining to create employment opportunities
for able bodied young men.

Speaking with State House correspondents
after meeting with Vice President Yemi
Osinbajo at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Al-
Makura said: “The president is the person
that can tell you precisely how he is working
on promises and interventions that he has
created by his ingenuity. And if at any point
in time the president is reviewing that issue, I
think he is the only person to that because
what he is doing is in the best interest of the
country. And so, it is not challengeable by
anybody whatever his position.”

Imo State Governor and Chairman of the
Progressives Governors’ Forum, Rochas
Okorocha, after meeting with the Vice
President however said that the promise will
be implemented one way or the other.

He said: “Well you see to be honest with you
it is a great idea, but there are many ways to
give that support, sometimes it could be in
cash which has its own challenges. Handling
of that is also in itself a wonderful and great
idea.

“Take for instance, in Imo State now I have
introduced what is called empowerment, they
buy motor cycles and give people N5,000 or
N 10,000, for me that is not my style. My
style is to declare free education, from
primary, secondary to university; nobody pays
one Naira in Imo state.

“The very poor people who have to ensure a
lot of social inconveniences to pay school
fees are no longer dong that, what has
happened is that he has saved that money to
produce further wealth, so if you keep money
through that system, it creates more impact
than physical cash.

“Physical cash sometimes creates more
problems, so it is great idea, we have to do it
one way or the other as time comes,” he
said.

He supported President Buhari’s anti-
corruption battle, stressing that any money
stolen out of the treasury will always have
adverse effect on development of
infrastructure in the country.

Earlier, Al-Malkura also disclosed that
he discussed with the Vice-President the
incessant violent clashes between
farmers’ and Fulani herdsmen in Nasarawa
which spilled over to neighboring Benue
State.

Attacks by the herdsmen on Agatu
communities in Benue state last week had
left hundreds dead and several building and
farms destroyed.

Al-Makura said he was liaising with the Benue
State government to end the clashes and that
the Vice-President was quite understanding
and cooperative as he promised federal
government’s quick intervention.

He said: “Secondly, I have also discussed
with Mr. Vice President about the security
situation in my state and what effort we are
making to bring everything to sanity.

“Also, I am making effort with my colleague
the governor of Benue state in having a joint
effort to see what we can do to ensure that
these long standing communal clashes
between Fulanis and farmers and Agatus in
Nasarawa and Agatus in Benue to see that
we find a lasting solution to it.” He said
He also lamented that since 1978 when the
state was connected to the national grid with
33KVA transmission lines, no improvement
had been made despite growing population
and energy needs in the state.

According to him, he discussed with Osinbajo
the need to connect the state with 330KVA
transmission lines.

He said: “Basically, I spoke with the Vice
President about the issues of power and
energy in my state. And as you must have
known, Nasarawa State being very close to
the federal capital territory, and I raised a lot
of demands for power and energy for
domestic and industrial purposes. And given
the sophistication of this area in terms of
different kinds of activities.

“And ironically, the state which was first
connected to power in 1978, is still within
33KV which is not even enough for the state
capital not to talk about other local
government councils.

“So, I have come specifically to request and
plead with Mr. Vice President and the
chairman of NIPP about the impending power
initiative in the country to consider Nasarawa
State as one of the states that will benefit
from the 330KV which is the robust
infrastructure for power that comes all the
way from Enugu to Benue and to Plateau
States. It just passed beside the Government
House but Nasarawa State has not been able
to benefit.

“I have been on this struggle since 2012, but
up till this time the state is still terribly
deprived of power and he has listened to me.
I believe that the people of Nasarawa State
will heave a sigh of relief once the 330 Kva is
done and another 132kva is connected to it
for easy distribution,” he added.

On the Vice President’s response, he said: “It
was very fantastic and he assured us that
they will see what the federal government
can do to quickly ameliorate the problem and
about the power, I got assurance from the
Vice President that we will succeed.”

www.thenationonlineng.net/dont-blame-buhari-for-going-back-on-n5000-promise-al-makura/

kennygee:
When the Emir whose palace the girl is allegedly kept is not saying anything.

Religion is the biggest scam that has ever befallen mankind. Quote me anywhere.

A minor who who can easily be threatened, brainwashed or jazzed willingly accepted to marry her kidnapper? I want to believe something else.

The abduction and consequent marriage of a
14-year-minor, Ese Oruru from Bayelsa State
by a Kano boy, Yunusa is gradually taking
another dimension as the Senator representing
Bayelsa East District, Ben Murray-Bruce
lambasts Inspector General of Police, Solomon
Arase over his comment.

Ben Bruce who just arrived in Nigeria
bemoaned the statement credited to Arase
that only the Emir of Kano, Mallam Sanusi
Lamido Sanusi could influence him to release
the abducted girl whose parents had been in
serious trauma.

Yunusa had abducted Ese in August 2015 in
Opolo, Yenagoa Local Government Area of
Bayelsa State and taken her to Kano where he
converted her to a Muslim and consequently
married the minor.

The girl’s parents had raised the alarm and in
the course of rescuing their daughter, they
had travelled to Kano, only to be told that the
girl had married and would not be released.
After series of police investigations and
intervention by the Emir of Kano, the IG, Arase
made a comment that only Sanusi could make
him to release the girl.

Reacting, the raging senator who spoke at the
Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja
on Monday said he had contacted Emir of
Kano and that the monarch had exonerated
himself from the issue. He said, “I have been
on an international flight without Internet and
just landed at MMA only to be briefed on the
abduction of Ese.

After being briefed I have consulted to
establish the facts of the matter. Having done
so, I make the following statement; Directing
his message to Arase, Ben Bruce said, IGP
Arase, Ese is a minor and can’t consent to
marry.

The constitution is clear. Your duty is to
ensure her release to her parents. The
constitution of Nigeria respects no person. To
pick and choose on whom it should apply is
unconstitutional. Use your powers to free Ese.
Your statement that Ese's release is
"dependent" on persons is sad. Her release is
guaranteed by the constitution.

Ben Bruce said, "Ensure you Free Ese. If you
refuse to enforce the Nigerian constitution this
matter will be escalated to the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights. "

The IGP is in a pole position to show that
there are no sacred cows in Nigeria and
everyone is equal before the law,” he said.

www.silverbirdtv.com/politics/11460-ese-oruru-ben-bruce-threatens-report-ig-un-commission-human-rights

When has the house of God become a profitable organization? Churches have no business in making profits or venturing into business.

efilefun:
lmao pained? I only get on here when am less busy to feel that "Nigerian spirit"

"One Nigeria" my brother.

efilefun:
yw but next time weigh the advantage of things before condemning it, that was how a dude called barricading of railway tracks and planting of trees and flowers waste.

.


But why does it seems like you're pained

efilefun:
Is it a must to post trash Those bikes ain't okada, they look more of a mountain bike which would be much more better in tackling those animals who operate with okada and escapes. Must you all criticize everything done by this administration cuz ur hero was kicked out of Aso Rock??

I'm not a supporter of APC nor PDP neither am I a partisan. I'm just a concerned Nigerian. Thank you!

emamos:
[s][/s]off topic.

It is a cry too painful to ignore.

How on earth can a Retired General buy Okada for the Army to fight insurgencies in this 21st Century? #WhereIsTheChange

Continuation...

Some context. Amy Winehouse had already
become a big deal by this time. Lily Allen was
making a splash with her first album Alright, Still.
Ergo, feisty young women from London who
could sing about their love lives were proving
good for business. Music execs were on high
alert to find the new Amy/Lily. MySpace was the
default page on their computers.

A producer at a hip indie record label called XL
heard Adele's demo and gave a heads-up to
Jonathan Dickins, a young, thrusting, recently
established talent manager. Dickins met Adele.
They got along. She knew he was the man for
her plan. He took a little longer.

At this stage she had three songs. Dickins
pointed her towards Dylan's Make You Feel My
Love. Now she had four. He took her on and
went back to XL. Richard Russell, the label's
boss, signed her up even though her easy
listening vibe (she called it acoustic soul) was
not exactly true to his rave roots. The teenage
girl who was into mainstream pop acts like
Destiny's Child and Gabrielle was joining a roster
that included the White Stripes and The Prodigy.
It was now autumn 2006.

When she was at school scribbling down lyrics
and coming up with melodies Adele was having
fun. Now she wasn't. She felt under pressure.
Professional people had invested time and
money and belief in her, and she had writer's
block. Months passed. She wasn't ready. Then
she met a "horrible boy". He broke her heart.
Bingo. A month or two later she was climbing
into the back of Pete Townshend's trailer…

She had her style nailed from the start - sit or
stand and sing. No fuss. No bother. But then,
she says she doesn't have rhythm, so dancing is
out. Nor is she the athletic type with a Florence-
like inclination to prance around the stage.
There's not a band to interact with or Rihanna-
style body to flaunt. She's just an ordinary girl
with an extraordinary voice. So, er… flaunt that.

Which is what she has done, to great effect. She
is perfectly imperfect. The ordinary girl thing
works for her melancholic love songs - a
universal theme to which the entire globe can
relate. Her whole style seems so relaxed, so
nonchalant. She can afford it to be. She has
people covering her back.

Adele has built her very own A-Team - a
formidable, mostly male, collection of world-class
producers and managers, who keep her show on
the road; a band of pipers paid to call her tune.
Which is what you would expect given her
position as the 21st Century's best-selling
recording artist. More surprising, perhaps, is that
her core crew has been with her from the very
beginning. Which tells you something about
Adele's story - it is largely about judgement not
luck. She calls it right so often you'd have her
pick your Lottery numbers.

There's Carl Fysh at Purple PR (who also looks
after Beyonce, one of Adele's celebrity fans)
managing her profile and avoiding the multiple
elephant traps that are scattered across today's
complex media landscape. And the
aforementioned Richard Russell at XL, a creative
collaborator who had the contacts and musical
sensitivity to draft in the right talent to help her
where and when she needed it, hiring producers
of the calibre of Mark Ronson, Jim Abbiss, Brian
Burton, and perhaps most notably, Rick Rubin,
the celebrated, Svengali-like American co-
founder of Def Jam Records. These were all
good choices made by a savvy teenage Adele.
But her best pick has to be Jonathan Dickins,
her manager.

Team Adele

• Rick Rubin - co-producer of 21; founded Def Jam Records which launched hip-hop stars Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys; also produced Johnny Cash's final LPs

• Richard Russell - owner of XL Recordings, Adele's UK label; other artists on his roster include Jamie XX,
Damon Albarn and FKA twigs

• Rob Stringer - English-born chairman of Columbia Records, which releases Adele's records in the US

The fit appears to be perfect, the vision shared.
They are in it for the long haul, they say. He
jokes about the job being easy - all he has to do
is spend 99% of his time saying no. Which is why
you don't see the singer endorsing products,
tipping up at celebrity openings, or rushing to
get her next record out. Unlike her one-time rival
Duffy - another British purveyor of "blue-eyed
soul" - who was neck-and-neck with Adele for a
while in the bestselling, Grammy-winning stakes,
until she agreed to star in an awful commercial
for Diet Coke in 2009, after which the wheels
seemed to come off.

By contrast, Adele and Dickins - who also
decided to get into bed with a multi-national
consumer giant - didn't go down the route of
providing a celebrity face for their corporate
suitor. They did the opposite. The deal they did
with Sony's Colombia Records was to use its
reputation and clout to be the face of their
product in America.

Being on the super-cool XL label in the UK
worked. It set her apart from her major-label
peers, and helpfully suggested her ostensibly
commercial pop was tinged with an indie edge.
But when it came to cracking the US market
they needed something different, a partner with
access to the all-important entertainment TV
shows. XL could look after the rest of the world,
but Rob Stringer at Columbia was going to be
their man in America.

He didn't let them down. Columbia launched 19
in June 2008 with solid if unspectacular sales.
But then Stringer got to work. He invited some
execs from the high-profile satirical TV
programme Saturday Night Live (SNL) to come
and see one of Adele's shows. They liked it and
booked her to be SNL's musical guest on 18
October 2008.

In what has now become a legendary episode in
Adele's story, she ended up being on the same
bill as the prominent Republican Sarah Palin,
who had been invited at the last minute. That is
the same Sarah Palin which SNL star-turn, Tina
Fey, had down pat in a mocking caricature. The
political/comic combo cranked up the viewing
figures for the show by several million to a 14-
year high. Fey came on and did her bit, Palin did
hers, and then the director cut to the unknown
and nervous young Londoner with a cherubic
face and big green eyes that were partially
concealed by a thick fringe of gingerish hair.

Adele was standing as still as a statue in a long
shapeless black cardigan, gripping the mic stand
as if she had vertigo. The piano, strings and
snare drum struck up while the camera zoomed
in and isolated the singer, a known sufferer of
severe pre-performance nerves. She blinks…
raises her chin… and storms it.

She softened them up with Chasing Pavements
and then knocked them out with her Cold
Shoulder. She was No 40 on iTunes before the
show. When she woke up in the morning to
prepare to fly home she was No 8. By the time
she landed back in the UK she was No 1.
Appearances on the David Letterman and Ellen
DeGeneres shows followed, as did a frenzy of
downloading and CD buying. Adele had cracked
America.

Or so she thought. In fact, as the subsequent
record-breaking sales of her second album 21
would reveal, she had barely scratched the
surface. The United States is a nation with an
insatiable appetite for power ballads soulfully
sung. Diana Ross, Whitney Houston, and Shania
Twain are but three of the hundreds of talented
female vocalists who have rolled off the US
production line of ladies who can sell a love
song. Adele can do that too, of course. But she
has something others do not.

Like the way she pronounces her words when
singing. It brings a freshness and energy to the
gentle genre. Her inflections are the product of
London's inner-city multicultural melting pot,
which has morphed the traditional cockney
diction into a one-size-fits-all urban patois. It's
not an accent you're going to pick up in
Nashville or Detroit. And then there's her vocal
technique of riding the notes and chords like a
super surfer in a high sea - effortlessly jumping
octaves, applying her natural vibrato, changing
pace, eliding words and verses, and modulating
pitch. She uses this vocal dexterity like a lasso,
to draw us in, to create a sense of intimacy, to
turn the emotional dial all the way up to tear-
jerking.

Her style is not everybody's cup of tea. Noel
Gallagher "can't see what all the fuss is about".
He doesn't like her music, thinks it's for "f***ing
grannies" and is part of a "sea of cheese"
washing over the rock'n'roll landscape. It is an
idiosyncratic view but not an uncommon one.
Nor is it altogether factually inaccurate.

What the critics said

• "She may have a jazz musician's disdain for
melody, but just listen to her informing a
lover that he is a 'temporary fix' on 'Best For
Last': 'You're just a filler in the space that
happened to be free/ How dare you think
you'd get away with trying to play me?' she
huffs, a schoolgirl on the top deck of a bus
nonchalantly channelling Aretha." The
Observer, 2008

• "Some will find Adele rigidly old-fashioned.
Her influences (Etta James, Dusty
Springfield, Billie Holiday) are from another
age. Her music breaks less ground than a
pneumatic drill made from plasticine. But
she sings with unabashed passion about a
kind of pain we can all recognise, and that
sort of thing doesn't date." Daily Telegraph,
2008

• "21, Adele's second album—named for her
age at the time she began composing it—has
a diva's stride and a diva's purpose. With a
touch of sass and lots of grandeur, it's an
often magical thing that insists on its
importance." The Village Voice, 2011

A Nielsen survey undertaken in December 2015
shortly after her latest album 25 was released in
America, found that a significant percentage of
the "early adopters" buying the physical product
were empty nesters aged 55-64 and most likely
from high-income households. That's not the
usual demographic for pop music.

Nor is Adele's overall American fan-base, which,
according to Nielsen is female-skewed (62%),
aged mostly between 25-44 years old, and with
children. It is not known if that profile is
mirrored around the world, but what is beyond
contention is the size of her following. It is
huge. When 25 was released in November it
went straight to No 1 on iTunes in 110 countries.
Moreover, it was the fastest-selling album of all
time in the UK with 800,307 copies sold in its
first week, beating the previous record holder
(turn away now Noel), Oasis's 1997 album Be
Here Now. It did even better in the US,
obliterating any previous first-week album sales
record with an historic 3.38 million units (or
equivalent in aggregated downloaded tracks)
shifted. This tidal wave of chart-topping sales
covered countries and continents.

www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35152397?ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=facebook

In little more than eight years, Adele has come
from nowhere to establish herself as one of the
world's biggest entertainment brands, right up
there with Grand Theft Auto, Star Wars, FIFA
2016, and Call of Duty. The proof was in the
prizes on Wednesday night, when she walked
away with a record-equalling four Brit Awards.
Her success is a remarkable achievement - all
the more impressive given that she is operating
in a market that has roughly halved in size over
the past decade.

It is a feat for which she has been been lauded,
applauded and awarded across the globe. And
called a "freak", by Tim Ingham, the respected
music journalist who runs the website Music
Business Worldwide. She is not normal, he told
me. At least, in terms of her achievements:
"Breaking album sales records in 2016 is in and
of itself a miracle." That is a sentiment echoed
by a high-ranking music exec who preferred not
to be named. He called Adele "an anomaly",
"label-proof", and a beacon "of hope for the
industry".

For a beleaguered and besieged music business
Adele is living proof that money can still be
made in an industry dominated and decimated by
streaming and freeness. The bad news,
according to Ingham, is that Adele is "the artist
you cannot manufacture". She's a one-off. Which
was apparent from the start.

There is a slightly irritating but quite enlightening
lo-fi video you can watch of Adele Adkins
online. It was recorded in the back of an
Airstream caravan as part of Pete Townshend's
In The Attic series of webcasts, which were
usually made around the time of a Who show.
This particular edition was filmed in late May
2007, just before Adele got famous.

She had turned 19 a couple of weeks earlier and
was still working on her first album (eventually
released in January 2008 and called 19 after her
age). Townshend's partner, the musician Rachel
Fuller, plays the Chat Show Host. She and Adele
sit side-by-side in the foreground on faux Louis
XIV chairs, Townshend and songwriter Mikey
Cuthbert are squeezed in at the back.

The interview aims at a Tiswas/TFI Friday
informality and irreverence. It misses. But it is
telling, nevertheless. We learn a lot. There are
the basics: Adele was born in Tottenham, North
London. Around the age of 10 she moved to
South London (Brixton, then West Norwood). She
didn't enjoy school until she was 14 years old.
That was when she accepted an offer to attend
the selective, state-sponsored Brit School for
Performing Arts & Technology in Croydon. There
she thrived. Her dad -of whom more later-
bought her the Simon & Patrick guitar she plays
in the video, an instrument she says she'd only
taken up 18 months earlier. By then she'd
cracked playing the sax, having given up the
flute at 13 because she'd started smoking.

There's plenty more bio-type info to pick over,
but that's not what makes this homespun tape
an ace in Adele's archive pack. It's her
performance as an ingenue interviewee and
singer. In both guises she is conspicuously
composed and self-assured. So much so she
makes her hosts look like the wannabes. It is
apparent even at this very early stage of her
career that Adele knew what she was about.

She is neither star-struck by Townshend's
presence nor impressed by Fuller's overbearing
style. She goes along with the banter enough to
ensure she doesn't appear rude or arrogant, but
makes it obvious she thinks the conversation is a
bit silly. She comes across as an independently
minded, matter-of-fact alpha-female who is
comfortable in her own skin.

She has since been variously described as fun,
gobby, bolshie, and loud - a big personality who
(and this comes up less frequently) is not one to
suffer fools. I have heard that a lot. Not publicly
though. "Off the record" was a standard refrain
used by industry-types when speaking to me
about her. They were worried about upsetting
the singer, which is not surprising. She is a
powerful individual who can make people
nervous. My guess is that has always been the
case. Adele Adkins is a force to be reckoned
with. As is her voice.

Notwithstanding the technical mishaps of her
recent Grammy performance where she
described her singing as "pitchy", there is no
doubt she is blessed with a remarkable voice.
Hearing it live is something else. I remember
being in the O2 Arena in London one afternoon
back in 2012. I was on my own save for seven or
eight events staff preparing tables for that
night's Brit Awards. I was standing at the end of
the runway stage when Adele walked on from
the wings with three or four backing singers,
tapped a microphone, signalled to the sound
desk, and let rip with Rolling in the Deep.

Her voice filled the arena, its natural ampage
sufficiently voluminous to make the great hall
feel like an intimate nightclub- a sensation
heightened by the raw emotion she conveyed in
the song. She had already demonstrated this
ability to the thousands gathered in the same
venue a year earlier for the 2011 Brit Awards
where she gave a career-defining, reputation-
sealing, sceptic-crushing performance that was
witnessed by millions watching live on television
and subsequently hundreds of millions catching
up online.

She sang track 11 - Someone Like You - from
her then recently released album, 21. Some of
the other acts that night had been unbelievable,
wowing the audience with their fancy routines
and stunning stage sets. Not Adele. She was not
unbelievable at all. She was much better than
that. She was totally believable. Many an eye
welled as she sang her painful lament with
heartrending candour.

From a production point of view, it was a pared
down piece of showbiz perfection. The attention
to detail was forensic, the presentation as slick
as a diplomat's dinner party. Adele, for her part,
gave a masterclass in the art of method acting.
She has the emotional dexterity of a leading
lady, shifting seamlessly between time and
place, drawing on past experiences, conjuring up
the associated feelings, and then unbelievably
believably reliving them in the present.

But for her to do so, the scene has to be
appropriately set. There is no place for the
spectacular pyrotechnics on which other
performers rely. Simplicity is all - no distractions,
no safety net. She is playing the solo artist in
every sense, vulnerable but defiant.

Hence we see her standing apart on a bare
stage in the cavernous O2. The scale of the
physical space mattered. There she was, alone
and exposed like a Bronte heroine in the
landscape. Away to her right was a grand piano
at which a silent man in a dark suit and a pair of
shades sat. A single spotlight framed Adele,
making her earrings sparkle and golden hair
glow. The mood of sombre isolation was
accentuated by her black dress. The look was
minimalistic and monochromatic, the message
clear: This is special, it is for you, pay attention.

It worked. When she finished the room erupted
in vigorous applause. Adele stepped away from
the microphone and looked at her feet. Emotions
were running high, hers included. That was down
to the lyrics, which hark back to the end of a
relationship with a man 10 years her senior who
- she had recently discovered - had become
engaged to someone else. As her mezzo-
contralto voice had sung out the words she had
started to picture her ex-lover watching the telly
and laughing at her inability to get over him.

There are many artists - Nina Simone comes to
mind - who can communicate love and loss with
staggering authenticity in songs written by
others. Not so much Adele. With the exception
of her version of Bob Dylan's Make You Feel My
Love, she is much, much better when performing
her own songs, where her investment in the
narrative is palpable and persuasive.

Her approach to writing typically involves her
hand taking direct instruction from her broken
heart - sometimes in the form of a "drunk diary"
- and then, more often than not, being honed
with an established lyricist such as Eg White,
Paul Epworth, or Ryan Tedder. The idea is to
make them as "personal as possible", according
to Dan Wilson, co-writer of Someone Like You.

Frank honesty is her trademark, her shtick. It's
her default public persona on stage and off - the
whole what-you-see-is-what-you-get thing,
complete with cackles, vulgarities, and informal
chattiness. It's charming, in the same way as
being polite to your friend's parents is charming.
In reality there is absolutely nothing easygoing or
flippant about the way Adele controls her public
image. Her "brand" is micro-managed with the
same meticulous professionalism she brings to
her music. In the fame game you have a choice -
manipulate or be manipulated. She has chosen
the former.

Adele in her own words:

• "When Twitter first came out, I was drunk-
tweeting and nearly put my foot in quite a
few times. So my management decided that
you have to go through two people, and then
it has to be signed off by someone." (BBC,
2015)

• "I don't make music for eyes, I make music
for ears." (Rolling Stone, 2011)

• "I get so nervous on stage I can't help but
talk. I try. I try telling my brain: stop sending
words to the mouth. But I get nervous and
turn into my grandma." (Observer, 2011)

• "I love a bit of drama. That's a bad thing. I
can flip really quickly." (US Vogue, 2012)

When stories started to leak out about her in the
press a few years ago, her suspicious mind
turned towards members of her inner circle. She
devised a mischievous plan to test the loyalty of
her subjects and flush out the treacherous. She
instigated a series of private tete a tetes with
individuals in her court into which she would
drop a juicy piece of bespoke insider information.
With the trap thus laid, she would sit back and
wait to see which, if any, of her planted tidbits
found their way into the public domain. If and
when they did - and they did - the culprit(s)
would be swiftly excommunicated "I get rid of
them", a process she described as "quite fun".

It did the trick. The leaks dried up. The
frighteners had been put on. But the message
hadn't reached Wales, where her estranged
father Mark Evans was living. He gave chapter
and verse to the Sun in 2011, with further quotes
appearing in the Daily Mail. He told how he met
Adele's mother, Penny Adkins, in a North London
pub in 1987 when he was in his mid-20s and she
was a teenage art student. They moved in
together, she soon fell pregnant, and Adele
Laurie Blue Adkins was born on 5 May 1988.

He didn't hang around. He went back to Wales,
worked as a plumber and became an alcoholic.
Penny moved to South London with their
daughter and worked as a masseuse, furniture
maker and office administrator. He speculated
that Adele's music was "rooted in the very dark
places she went through as a young girl", citing
his departure and the death of his father, to
whom he said his daughter was very close. He
hoped that after years of separation from Adele
they could patch things up. Adele's response to
her dad's tabloid tales was unequivocal: "He's
f***ing blown it. He'll never hear from me
again… If I ever see him I will spit in his face."

Her father said it was he who imbued his
daughter with a love of music. She talks about
her mother listening to Jeff Buckley and taking
her to gigs - The Beautiful South when she was
three years old, The Cure a couple of years later.
By the age of 10 she was making her own
choices, with The Spice Girls her No 1: "It was a
huge moment in my life when they came out. It
was girl power. It was five ordinary girls who did
so well and just got out. I was like, I want to get
out."

She did. She left her comprehensive school in
Balham, where she said there was a depressing
lack of ambition, and went to the Brit School -
Amy Winehouse's alma mater. She met her best
friend Laura Dockrill (now an author and
performance poet), about whom she wrote the
song My Same (they had a big falling-out, then
made up. Adele says she likes to create drama).
Her guitarist Ben Thomas went there too,
watching Adele get in to trouble for sleeping in
and turning up late. But she was there promptly
for at least one morning assembly where she
sang a song that impressed Stuart Worden, now
the headmaster, so much he asked if he could
have a copy. "Well…" she said. "You'll have to
buy it."

That's the thing about the Brit School. It teaches
its students (Mr Worden calls them artists) the
business behind the show, which has benefited
Adele. She likes a good deal. Like the time back
then when she went into a record shop and
bought two albums for £5, one by Ella Fitzgerald,
the other by Etta James. She didn't actually
know who they were, she just wanted to look
cool. But she listened to them. Eventually. And
was inspired (she frequently name-checks Etta
James as an influence). She wrote some songs
and a friend posted them on MySpace. It was
the summer of 2006.

www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35152397?ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=facebook

Largas:


Our name has been tarnished severally LG transfer windows. Starting from the De Gea saga, and the coutless other times we tried to sign Ramos and even neymar.madrid president just said the united board can't process a transfer request. That was a Shame. I believe Woodward is in charge of transfers and he is likened to moyes the clueless one.

I understand your point about the coach. I'm also a fan of Giggs. He has played for over 20years in the premier league and over 10years in the champions league with united only. I don't understand how he does not have the experience to succeed at united. For a newbie coach, winning two games losing one and drawing one is not a bad record.


I think van gaal should go at the end of the season. But if he loses shamefully against arsenal he should Sven go after the weekend.

Manchester United is not just a club but a FAMILY. I can proudly beat my chest and say that we're the most loyal fans I've ever seen in football history. #GGMU

Ebola; Zika. Both diseases that were unknown to
many until recently. But there have been huge
outbreaks of both - and each time scientists and
global health experts were caught off guard.

In this week's Scrubbing Up, Dr Seth Berkley,
CEO of the Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance suggests
Ebola and Zika may be followed by other public
health emergencies fuelled by other lesser-
known diseases.

First it was Ebola and now Zika; two official
World Health Organization (WHO) Public Health
Emergencies of International Concern within as
many years.

Both diseases have been known about for
decades, and yet in both cases no vaccines or
drugs were available when we most needed
them. So what's going on?

Is this just a terrible coincidence, being caught
off-guard like this twice in such quick
succession, or is it part of a worrying trend and
a taste of things to come?

At first glance it wouldn't appear that the two
diseases have much in common. One is difficult
to catch but a ferocious killer, while the other
spreads with ease but is relatively harmless to
the vast majority of people infected.

Yet, in both cases there is something novel,
either in the way the virus has spread or in how
it affected people which has made the outbreaks
more of a threat.

In global health security terms that is a real
concern, because such sudden changes of
modus operandi can not only make public health
threats even more difficult to predict or
anticipate than normal, but also make all the
difference between a localised outbreak and
global pandemic.

Even more worrying is the fact that with
changing trends in human and animal migration,
increasing urbanisation, the density of mega
cities, the rise in antimicrobial resistance and
climate change, such threats could become
increasingly more common.

In the case of Ebola, what changed was its
ability to spread.

Historically Ebola's aggression has been its own
worst enemy; the virus often immobilising and
killing its hosts before they had the opportunity
to infect others, limiting its spread mainly to
contact with the deceased.

Because of this, for decades it remained a
relatively low impact disease, confined to small
outbreaks in remote and relatively unpopulated
rural regions.

What changed in West Africa was that for the
first time it was able to reach more densely
populated urban areas, increasing its ability to
spread almost exponentially.

With Zika it was different. It had been believed
to be a relatively benign disease, producing only
mild flu-like symptoms - if any at all.

Because of this there was little concern about
the spread of this mosquito-borne disease as it
crossed continents.

But now with a Zika outbreak suspected as the
most likely cause of a sudden spike in cases of
microcephaly in Brazil - which can cause babies
to be born with abnormally small heads - we
have another global health emergency on our
hands, particularly if reports of sexual
transmission prove valid and its spread is not
limited to mosquitoes.

If Zika is a factor with microcephaly, it is not
entirely clear why. In the seven decades since
Zika was first discovered, such horrific
complications have never before been observed.

A form of nerve damage, called Guillain-Barré
syndrome, has been seen a small number of
people, and in the case of pregnancies there
were 17 cases of malformations of the central
nervous system in foetuses following an outbreak
in French Polynesia in 2014.

However, even then Zika was not implicated until
recently, and only after the alarm was sounded
in Brazil.

So, why now? It could simply be something we
only see as a result of scale - 1.5m cases of
Zika in Brazil, compared to just 30,000 in the
worst previous outbreak.

Or it could just be that surveillance in Brazil was
good enough to detect it, picking up both
increases of Zika and microcephaly immediately,
compared to West Africa where poor health
systems meant it took three months before
Ebola was first confirmed.

Or it could be that the virus has mutated to a
more virulent strain.

Regardless, the fact remains that it could take
years before we establish a conclusive link with
microcephaly, and possibly even longer before
we understand the epidemiological factors
leading to its sudden emergence now.

What is clear is that in addition to mosquito
control in affected countries what may also be
needed is another new vaccine.

But unlike Ebola, we don't have several
candidate vaccines lined up, waiting in the wings
which we can rapidly steer through clinical trials.

Thanks to Ebola, industry has now been faster to
react and commit to develop a vaccine or adapt
existing ones, but it will still likely be years
before one is ready.

However, why does it take a global health
emergency for us to even realise no vaccine
exists in the first place?

Part of the problem is that for some serious
diseases there is simply no profit in prevention,
which means that if we want to avoid epidemics
we cannot expect industry to provide the
solution.

Instead governments, public funders and private
donors need to share the costs, and they need
to do so now, rather than waiting until the next
epidemic.

The good news is that we now already have an
idea of where to focus our attention. In
December the WHO brought together scientists
and clinicians who came up with an "initial list"
which reads like a most-wanted of the worst
eight diseases, including Ebola and other
hemorrhagic fevers like Marburg and Lassa
fever.

They also flagged a sub-set of three other
serious diseases that also needed urgent
attention, which included Zika.

And therein lies the point. None of the diseases
on the list were particularly surprising.

They are known threats, it's just that they are
not big enough threats to have warranted the
world to rally round and put in place the
incentives to develop vaccines, at least not yet.
What Zika and Ebola have both taught us is that
we can't assume pathogens will continue to
behave the same way.

We need to stop waiting until we see evidence
of a disease becoming a global threat before we
treat it like one.


www.bbc.com/news/health-35614569?ocid=socialflow_facebook

Largas:


Brilliant post. But you just succeeded in analyzing our psst years.

I'd love to have your say on the nature of the current team, the coach and your idea for a better united in terms of playing pattern, coach and players

[b]I can say that I'm disappointed with our side passes, back passes and lack of attacking football. Manchester United has a great squad that when harnessed, can match the likes of PSG, Barcelona, Bayern, Real Madrid and what have you. The likes of Xavi, Inestia, Busquets, Messi and what have you never made their marks in one day. Even our class of '94 took years to become what we know them for today.

I don't want the likes of Guardiolas, Mourinhos, Ancelloti, Klopp and other world class coaches in Manchester United. Who knew about Luis Enrique before he took over the reigns in Camp Nou. He was only the coach of "Celta Vigo". Guardiola was only an ex player before he made a name for himself.
Mourinho was only a journalist in sports before he ventured in the game. Wenger was only a graduate of Economic. Even our Sir Alex Ferguson was just the coach of Scotland before he came to Old Trafford.

Giggs has a great future in managing us just like Zidane is doing at Madrid.

Any manager can turn around our fortunes and not necessarily "World Class" managers.

Our academy is really in a bad shape right now and we need an urgent emergency in restructuring it. We need to also look at how we can re-strategize our scouting system. I don't know who makes the major decisions in our board but if LVG is leaving today, Ed Woodward or whosoever needs to also follow same path. Thank you![/b]