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Religion / Pastor Adeboye Clocks 74 Today, Extolled By Buhari by Brytawon(m): 9:45am On Mar 02, 2016 |
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 |
Crime / Re: BREAKING: Abducted Bayelsa Girl Leaves Kano Under Tight Security by Brytawon(m): 10:08am On Mar 01, 2016 |
HungerBAD: 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. |
Crime / BREAKING: Abducted Bayelsa Girl Leaves Kano Under Tight Security by Brytawon(m): 9:35am On Mar 01, 2016 |
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 |
Politics / Don’t Blame Buhari For Going Back On N5,000 Promise– Al-Makura by Brytawon(m): 5:22pm On Feb 29, 2016 |
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/ |
Politics / Re: Ese Oruru: Ben Bruce Threatens To Report IG To UN Commission On Human Rights by Brytawon(m): 4:10pm On Feb 29, 2016 |
kennygee: 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. |
Politics / Ese Oruru: Ben Bruce Threatens To Report IG To UN Commission On Human Rights by Brytawon(m): 3:47pm On Feb 29, 2016 |
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 |
Religion / Re: ATM Mobile Sets Spotted In Church (photo) by Brytawon(m): 2:54pm On Feb 29, 2016 |
When has the house of God become a profitable organization? Churches have no business in making profits or venturing into business. 2 Likes |
Business / Re: Help GTB Cleared My Account And My Account Balance Is Now In Debit by Brytawon(m): 1:21pm On Feb 29, 2016 |
efilefun: "One Nigeria" my brother. |
Business / Re: Help GTB Cleared My Account And My Account Balance Is Now In Debit by Brytawon(m): 1:10pm On Feb 29, 2016 |
efilefun:. But why does it seems like you're pained |
Business / Re: Help GTB Cleared My Account And My Account Balance Is Now In Debit by Brytawon(m): 12:57pm On Feb 29, 2016 |
efilefun: I'm not a supporter of APC nor PDP neither am I a partisan. I'm just a concerned Nigerian. Thank you! |
Business / Re: Help GTB Cleared My Account And My Account Balance Is Now In Debit by Brytawon(m): 12:41pm On Feb 29, 2016 |
emamos: It is a cry too painful to ignore. |
Business / Re: Help GTB Cleared My Account And My Account Balance Is Now In Debit by Brytawon(m): 12:20pm On Feb 29, 2016 |
How on earth can a Retired General buy Okada for the Army to fight insurgencies in this 21st Century? #WhereIsTheChange 10 Likes 2 Shares |
European Football (EPL, UEFA, La Liga) / Re: Manchester United Transfers And Discussions.. by Brytawon(m): 12:05pm On Feb 29, 2016 |
• Manchester United won? Time not to ask my dad for money. |
European Football (EPL, UEFA, La Liga) / Re: Manchester United Transfers And Discussions.. by Brytawon(m): 12:04pm On Feb 29, 2016 |
• No matter how much money is used on transfers, in the end the ones that will care the most come from home. Thrilled for Rashford. |
European Football (EPL, UEFA, La Liga) / Re: Manchester United Transfers And Discussions.. by Brytawon(m): 12:02pm On Feb 29, 2016 |
• Messi, Neymar & Suarez? Ever heard of Rashford, Lingard & Depay mate? Yeah. Thought so. |
European Football (EPL, UEFA, La Liga) / Re: Manchester United Transfers And Discussions.. by Brytawon(m): 11:59am On Feb 29, 2016 |
*My Personal Best Few Quotes From Yesterday's Game. #MANUvARS • It took Messi 8 years to score two goals against Cech, but it only took Rashford 32 minutes to tear Cech apart. A new cult hero seems to have been born in Old Trafford. 1 Like |
Celebrities / Re: Adele: The Incredible Full Story by Brytawon(m): 11:05am On Feb 28, 2016 |
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
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Celebrities / Adele: The Incredible Full Story by Brytawon(m): 11:02am On Feb 28, 2016 |
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 |
European Football (EPL, UEFA, La Liga) / Re: Manchester United Transfers And Discussions.. by Brytawon(m): 8:20am On Feb 27, 2016 |
Largas: 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 2 Likes |
Health / Zika And Ebola: A Taste Of Things To Come? by Brytawon(m): 6:01am On Feb 27, 2016 |
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 |
European Football (EPL, UEFA, La Liga) / Re: Manchester United Transfers And Discussions.. by Brytawon(m): 11:00pm On Feb 26, 2016 |
Largas: [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] |
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