₦airaland Forum

Baghban (Amitabh Bachan, Emma Malini)
Pretty Woman ( Richard Gere, Julia Roberts )

Jhymrod:
Baghban- Indian and unforgivable - nollywood

Oh My God! That's my all time best movie ever. I cannot enough of the movie. Timeless sound track too. Please do you still have the movie?

SPG4U:
[size=20pt]OP are u done?


I believe u are new to bobbies



D list still plenty[/size]

Feel free to add yours. I am a learner in Bobby business.

Bazongas. Boobies. The girls. Whatever you call them, breasts are surprising for those that have them and those that don’t. Turning up around puberty for women, estrogen and growth hormone cause the development of breasts, which are made up of glandular and fatty tissue.

Here are nine more things you may not have known about the mammaries. After all, they are our breast friends.

1. Some women can orgasm via breast stimulation

Two high-profile sex educators conducted an in-depth study to bolster claims that women could reach orgasm through breast stimulation alone. Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller, authors of I Love Female Orgasm: An Extraordinary Orgasm Guide, reported that 1% of women in their research told of their ability to orgasm through playing with their pair.

2. Boobs are more fraternal twins than identical

Everyone has asymmetrical features: an arm longer the other, a foot larger than the other, even a breast larger than the other. In a study published in the International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology, the right breast was found to be on average larger than the left.

3. Breasts can weigh about as much as three bricks

Imagine carrying three bricks around all day every day and then sleeping with them on your chest. The average bra can support breasts that weigh between 0.23 kilograms (half a pound) and 9 kilograms (20 pounds), about the weight of three bricks. That’s heavy stuff.

4. And if you like ‘em large, you’re probably not rolling in dollar

A 2013 study found that men who "lacked material goods," or who were from a lower socioeconomic background, preferred women with larger bosoms, as this higher fat content may indicate the women have access to better resources.

In fact, these researchers found that those from a low socioeconomic background desired a woman with bigger boobs more than men from a medium socioeconomic background. And, in turn, men from a medium socioeconomic background fancied a larger pair than men from a high socioeconomic background.

Essentially, the poorer the man, the larger the handful preferred.

5. Everyone stares at your breasts. EVERY. ONE.

According to a study where women and men were fitted with an eye-tracking device, both were found to look at a woman’s boobs instead of her face but men do it for longer. So women do boob-watch too but they’re just quicker about it.

6. What does your nipple type say about you?

There are different types of nipples, clinically classed as ‘normal,’ ‘flat,’ ‘puffy,’ ‘inverted’ with three grades of inversion, and ‘unilateral.’ And just like the asymmetry of boobs, your nipples may not be a matching pair.

7. …or even a matching triplet

Another udder. A triple nipple. Having a third nipple somewhere on the body is called polythelia. Around three percent of people have an extra nipple, according to Pathology Outline, although estimates varying greatly by location. The National Institute of Health’s Office of Rare Diseases estimates that fewer than 200,000 people in the United States have an extra teat. It’s often mistaken for a mole and can appear anywhere on the body, so grab a mirror and have a good check.

8. Smoking and pregnancy can cause sweater puppies to sag

There is a vital protein in the skin called elastin, which gives skin elasticity and stretch without tearing. Continual smoking can actually break down this protein, causing slack bosoms. Additional pregnancies can also cause breasts to travel south, as a study presented at the 2007 conference for the American Society of Plastic Surgeons found.

9. You can get your hands on all the bras – for science!

In fact, there is an entire department for this at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Created by the bra manufacturer Top Form, the lab is purely dedicated to the research and development of bras, glorious bras!

Source : iflscience.com

MEXICO CITY (AP) — In a scheme befitting a crime novel, Mexico's most powerful drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, escaped from a maximum security prison through a 1.5-kilometer (1 mile) tunnel that opened into the shower area of his cell, the country's top security official announced Sunday.

The elaborate, ventilated escape hatch built allegedly without the detection of authorities allowed Guzman to do what Mexican officials promised would never happen after his re-capture last year — slip out of one of the country's most secure penitentiaries for the second time.

Eighteen employees from various part of the Altiplano prison 55 miles (90 kilometers) west of Mexico City have been taken in for questioning, Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said in a news conference without answering questions.

A manhunt began immediately late Saturday for the head of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, which has an international reach and is believed to control most of the major crossing points for drugs at the U.S. border with Mexico.

Associated Press journalists near the Altiplano saw the roads were being heavily patrolled by Federal Police with numerous checkpoints and a Blackhawk helicopter flying overhead. Flights were also suspended at Toluca airport near the penitentiary in the State of Mexico, and civil aviation hangars were being searched.

Guzman was last seen about 9 p.m. Saturday in the shower area of his cell, according to a statement from the National Security Commission. After a time, he was lost by the prison's security camera surveillance network. Upon checking his cell, authorities found it empty and a 20-by-20-inch (50-by-50 centimeter) hole near the shower.

Guzman's escape is a major embarrassment to the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto, which had received plaudits for its aggressive approach to top drug lords. Since the government took office in late 2012, Mexican authorities have nabbed or killed six of them, including Guzman.

Guzman faces multiple federal drug trafficking indictments in the U.S. as well as Mexico, and was on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's most-wanted list.

After Guzman was arrested on Feb. 22, 2014, the U.S. said it would file an extradition request, though it's not clear if that happened.

The Mexican government at the time vehemently denied the need to extradite Guzman, even as many expressed fears he would escape as he did in 2001 while serving a 20-year sentence in the country's other top-security prison, Puente Grande, in the western state of Jalisco.

Former Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam told the AP earlier this year that the U.S. would get Guzman in "about 300 or 400 years" after he served time for all his crimes in Mexico. Murillo Karam said sending Guzman to the United States would save Mexico a lot of money, but keeping him was a question of national sovereignty.

He dismissed concerns that Guzman could escape a second time. That risk "does not exist," Murillo Karam said.

It was difficult to believe that such an elaborate structure could have been built without the detection of authorities. According to Rubido, the tunnel terminated in a house under construction in a neighborhood near the prison. Guzman dropped by ladder into a hole 10 meters (yards) deep that connected with a tunnel about 1.7 meters (yards) high that was fully ventilated.

Guzman is known for the elaborate tunnels his cartel has built underneath the Mexico-U.S. border to transport cocaine, methamphetamines and marijuana, with ventilation, lighting and even railcars to easily move products.

He was first caught by authorities in Guatemala in 1993, extradited and sentenced to 20 years in prison on drug-trafficking-related charges. Many accounts say he escaped in a laundry cart, although there have been several versions of how he got away. What is clear is that he had help from prison guards, who were prosecuted and convicted.

Guzman was finally re-captured in February 2014 after eluding authorities for days across his home state of Sinaloa, for which the cartel is named. He was listed as 56 years old last year, though there are discrepancies in his birth date.

During his first stint as a fugitive, Guzman transformed himself from a middling Mexican capo into arguably the most powerful drug trafficker in the world. His fortune grew to be estimated at more than $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine, which listed him among the "World's Most Powerful People" and ranked him above the presidents of France and Venezuela.

Guzman has long been known for his ability to pay off local residents and authorities, who would tip him off to operations launched for his capture. He finally was tracked down to a modest beachside high-rise in the Pacific Coast resort city of Mazatlan on Feb. 22, 2014, where he had been hiding with his wife and twin daughters. He was taken in the early morning without a shot fired.

But before they reached him, security forces went on a several-day chase through Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state. They found houses where Guzman supposedly had been staying with steel-enforced doors and the same kind of lighted, ventilated tunnels that allowed him to escape from a bathroom to an outside drainage ditch.

Even with his 2014 capture, Guzman's Sinaloa Cartel empire continues to stretch throughout North America and reaches as far away as Europe and Australia. The cartel has been heavily involved in the bloody drug war that has torn through parts of Mexico for the last decade, taking at least an estimated 100,000 lives.

Altiplano, which is considered the main and most secure of Mexico's federal prisons, also houses Zetas drug cartel leader Miguel Angel Trevino, and Edgar Valdes Villarreal, known as "La Barbie," of the Beltran Leyva cartel.


Source: Associated Press writer Cristian Kovadloff in Toluca contributed to this report.

Cc: lalasticlala

In case you weren’t aware, soccer happens to be the most popular sport in the world. It might surprise you, but it’s true. And as a result of this fact, the best players alive reap major rewards. As if you needed another reason to be jealous of professional, athletes, now you’re about to see how well it pays to be a professional footballer.

Goal.com recently released their annual “Goal Rich List,” and it provides a detailed look at which players make the most amount of money, and where their wealth comes from. This list takes into consideration salaries, endorsement deals, and any form of investment portfolios that a player might have as well. So take a seat if you must because this is going to sting.

Here’s a look at the top five wealthiest soccer players on the planet.

5. Wayne Rooney
Total wealth: $116 million

Wayne Rooney plays strike for both the English National Team and Manchester United, and is the wealthiest player in the English Premier League. Known for his strength on the field, Rooney has evolved into more than just goal scorer, which is why Man U rewarded him with a new $104 million contract in 2014. On top of that, the deal is reportedly worth £300,000 a week.

4. Zlatan Ibrahimovic
Total wealth: $118 million

Zlatan Ibrahimovic is a superstar forward who plays for Paris Saint-Germain in the French Ligue 1. Although a hefty salary from his club team factors into his net worth, much of Ibrahimovic’s money comes from endorsement deals and smart investments. According to Goal, he has sponsorship deals with Nivea, Xbox, Volvo, and Dressman, and his investments include owning a substantial amount of property. It appears that Ibrahimovic is much more than a human highlight reel.

3. Neymar
Total wealth: $152 million

Neymar is the face of Brazilian soccer and one of the main cogs on a very talented FC Barcelona team. His skills with the ball, and flair for excellence on the pitch, have made him one of the most popular players in the sport. His annual salary, which stands at €8.8 million a year, is small potatoes compared to his overwhelming endorsement deals, that include agreements with the likes of Nike, Panasonic, Volkswagen, Red Bull, and many more. That’s not a bad haul for being only 23 years old.

2. Lionel Messi
Total wealth: $225 million

Lionel Messi is not only a magician on the soccer field, but he’s a businessman of it. His lucrative contract with Barcelona pays him $50 million a year and he has tons of endorsement deals on his plate — he works with brands such as Adidas, Samsung, Gillette, Gatorade, and Dolce & Gabbana. Messi is arguably one of the two-best soccer players in the world, and if he keeps winning Ballon d’Or awards (he’s won four times), which is given to FIFA World Player of the Year, he’ll be sure to continue to increase his overall wealth.

1. Cristiano Ronaldo
Total wealth: $236 million

It should come as no surprise that Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo tops this list. For anyone who follows the sport, Ronaldo is the absolute best of the best. He scores goals, dribbles with speed and force, and has sensational ball control. His deal with Real Madrid pays him a whopping €18.2 million per year, and that number doesn’t include bonuses. He also crushes it on the endorsement front, has his own clothing line (CR7), and owns a very profitable property portfolio. Plus, people seem to find him easy on the eyes, so he’s got that going for him as well. It pays to be Cristiano Ronaldo

source :yahoo sports.

Cc: lalasticlala

Kayode Tijani started his career in journalism at a younger age, and today he has evolved to be one of the most respected sport analysts in Nigeria. With over one hundred and fifty interviews with acclaimed celebrities, archives of Olympic Games from 1869 till date to his credit, Tijani has truly carved a niche for himself in journalism. He takes Yinka Lawal through how the journey started his plans among other issues.


When did your love for journalism started?
I have been a sport journalist since 1987; I started with a print media though I have been in TV for years now. I started with Guardian immediately I left the Nigeria institute of journalism (NIJ). I found everything interesting and very different from what I was used to. I enjoyed it so much because I was travelling to lot of trips, not so much money but we enjoyed it.

Along the line Chief Alex Akinyele, a former minister of information got a government appointment and I became the Chief Press secretary; it was a National Reconciliation Committee, I went to Abuja and later came back to Lagos. I was head of sport at Channels TV and after I left Channels TV, I stopped working for anybody, since then I have been on my own.

You started with as a print person, how did you venture into TV?
The start of me going into TV started in 1994, I was one of the few people who got accreditation to cover the 1994 world cup in USA, but when I got to the embassy I was refused. They felt because I was not married and too young, I won’t come back. Then I was the Nigeria correspondent for African soccer so I called Emmanuel Maradas and Chief Akinyele but I was still refused. It was devastating that I won’t cover the world cup. So I got a video and I recorded every minute of the world cup that was how TV started. Being on TV was completely different from print media, later I went to UK to be Head of Sport for BEN TV in also head of sport for revelation TV in London. If I was not denied visa in 1994, I am sure I will still be a print person.


When you started what were the challenges you faced?
Then, no much challenge because Nigeria was not too tough, money was not difficult to make, excelling on the job was joy for everyone who joined journalism, not now when people are not sure how they are going to make a living.

So during your time as a sport journalist and now, your time was better?
Yes, better and much more, it was fun, you do it not for money alone but fun, if you are smart there are project you will do and you get paid. Then you could get sponsors to go to competition, not now, it’s tough.

But that doesn’t mean you didn’t encounter any challenge at all?
Challenges were not much then. Things has really changed from then, now there is no fun like it used to be, it is to survive now, then it was for fun. You want to interview the biggest people, go to big show to excel, every medium wants to be better than the other, but now, it is for survival. There was a time I was robbed at Coteviour, they took my passport and money, I had I had to come back by the road.

..you can read up the concluding interview...http://blueapreel..com/2015/06/leaving-home-early-prepared-me-kayode.html?spref=fb

Lordave:
nur ein wenig. Es geht mir gut

Alles klar. Schönes Wochenende.

Lordave:
Dog

Hallo, Wie gehts es ihnen? Sprechen sie Deutsch?

kcstyle40:
i understand u perfectly... But am not talking about soup and wire here..... Am asking is there any where it is writen in the holy book bible or even the koran where it is stated or comanded that man MUST marry one wife ONLY?

Don't mind me sir. I m just trying to be sarcastic. As per your question, I have no idea but I know it's in the Quran that one can marry two, three or four...provided one is capable and can maintain equity among them. If one is not able to fulfill this condition, one should just stick to one woman

kcstyle40:
i understand u perfectly... But am not talking about soup and wire here..... Am asking is there any where it is writen in the holy book bible or even the koran where it is stated or comanded that man MUST marry one wife ONLY?

Don't mind me sir. I m just trying to be sarcastic. As per your question, I have no idea but I know it's in the Quran that one can marry two, three or four...provided one is capable and can maintain equity among them. If one is not able to fulfill this condition, one should just stick to one woman.

From experience and research, man is never a one woman specie. We are not wired up to chop only one kind of soup.

kcstyle40:
Is there any where it is writen that a man must marry ONLY ONE wife??.........

It was at the Church service for the 90th birthday of the legendary Matriarch of the Awo dynasty Chief Dr Hannah Dideolu Awolowo in Ikenne that the thoughts that prompted this article began.
Some well known highly placed gentlemen and their wives were called upon to partake in the wine sipping, bread breaking ritual called Holy Communion. As soon as these respectable ladies and gentlemen, all of them past age 70, and amongst whom were renowned professors, high court judges, legal luminaries and business moguls, finished their spiritual blessing and were returning to their seats, they caught a pitiable sight in their over-flowing garb of hypocrisy.
They wore forlorn mien plastered with furrowed frowned faces like some one afflicted with putrid smell of heavy dose of fart.
They looked as if they were mourning a three-year-old boy mistakenly killed by his own father, or the passing of a poor woman who has just succumbed to excruciatingly painful cancer.
They clung to their wives as if they were newly wedded. I temporarily forgot that I was in a holy Church, the spiritual enclave of Christians.
I almost laughed my head off because I knew each of the ‘holy' ‘monogamous' men intimately and by Jove, I knew of their second, third or fourth wives/liaisons/mistresses with whom they had sired several children.
To the whole world they were champions of monogamy, but to their hearts and conscience they were celebrated polygamists, or at best, serial monogamists. Pshaw!
I saw pain written all over them, the agony of living a lie, the unease of hypocrisy, and the shame of going through life pretending to be what you are not.
This is the sort of agony a lot of the so-called monogamists go through all their lives.
The series of lies they sell to their wives, and the double life they present to their pastors and church leaders, most of whom are actually equally guilty of hypocrisy and double life living.
This piece is not set out to condemn or criticize monogamy. Monogamy is perfect for those who believe in its concept and can genuinely keep to it. I too have been married to one lovely woman for almost 45 years and it has been like a marriage made in heaven. I happen also to be the promoter along with some friends the 35-year-old Family Club of Nigeria which is dedicated to the upliftment and celebration of marriage and family values.
The article is designed to expose the hypocrisy and pain associated with embracing false notions which are really not observed by any culture in the world, and to advise those who erroneously sentence themselves to a life of sadness and emptiness because they were deceived to believe that there is some utopia somewhere called monogamy.
I am very much aware that this article will generate a lot of controversy most especially from those who live holier-than-thou life and have continued to deceive the world that they are upholders of a doctrine that is not supported by true and enlightened interpretation of any religious doctrine.
The white men, I am yet to see any human being whose skin colour is like that of chalk, came and told the unfortunate lands they invaded that the cherished cultures, traditions and religions of such lands were rubbish, and instead indoctrinated them with values which they themselves never believed in or truly practiced.
We know of King Henry Vlll, and several major historical figures in ‘Christian'Europe who had more than one wife in addition of a string of wives who their ‘laws' forbade them to address as wives but who nonetheless perform all the functions of wife minus name.
God bless President Mitterrand who openly confessed to having two women in his life, with the one in the other house with whom he fathered an 18-year-old daughter at the time he passed on.
I have schooled, worked and lived virtually in all the continents of the world and I make bold to say with all emphasis at my disposal that no culture on planet earth truly practices monogamy.
My Greek, Italian, Russian, British, American and other Caucasians routinely visit their other wives [called by other names] with whom they have children. But back in the homes shared with the one carrying the ring, they are monogamists!
If God had wanted humanity to be monogamous He or She would not have made the pigeon the only monogamous creature. The cultures that practice polygamy had always known that at any given time, the number of available marriageable women far out number available men plus the fact that an 80-year-old man, if he has money, is still very much in the market whereas a 60-year-old woman may not be that lucky. The biological limitation to a woman's productive age is also a factor. Why should a woman therefore remain on the shelf till age 45 (!) when she could jolly well get married as second or sixth wife to a man who can afford to share life's responsibilities with her?
Why should a woman leave a man with whom she is No 1, simply because he took a second wife and end up being numberless in the hands of several men with whom she naturally shares bed just because of some doctrine she hardly understands?
All the women who should go and marry but are saying they do not want to share their man with another woman in a polygamous setting, are sharing current boyfriends with several other women. Where is the logic?
The argument that children in a polygamous house are always at each other's throat does not hold water. Many siblings of monogamous families are known to have had worse and irresolvable, irreconcilable squabble, with dirty bitterness over inheritance than children from different mothers.
The agony suffered by both men and women in the hand of unnatural laws and doctrines is too stifling for comfort.
In 2002, five hundred and two Reverend mothers were reported to have died while procuring abortion in Rome (!!). Nigerian Tribune wrote an editorial on the unfortunate incident. And stories of Reverend fathers having children and sodomising young men in their care are legion! Why the hypocrisy? Why should the world continue to live the life of Ostrich?
A well known Nigerian journalist hid his other wives from his wife because his religion would not permit of it and his wife, living in monogamy should not hear of it. At his funeral, 9 Funeral Service programmes by his 9 wives surfaced and the woman parading the ring collapsed. It was the grace of God that prevented double interment that day!
The Western world which had not learnt the art of living amicably with more than one partner under the same roof has indulged in multiple serial marriages, divorcing innocent wives under flimsy excuses so that another woman can move in should not be measure of standard for the world.
Thank God Mrs Hillary Clinton in the US and Mrs Cook in England were very much wiser. They refused to allow some indiscretion on the part of their husbands to ruin their marriages.
There was a well known American actor who passed on about a decade ago and all his 11 ex-wives with their numerous children attended his funeral. To ridicule the lie of their hypocritical existence, all the women were recognized and addressed as wives. As far as records show, the man had 11 wives!
Society must rethink this issue of pretentious monogamy vis-à-vis polygamy so that in the not-too-distant future we do not end up with millions of unmarried women whose life style would be worse than prostitutes' and millions of children whose fathers would be nowhere to be found.

Source:Chief Tola Adeniyi, former MD of Daily Times

mymadam:
Please can anyone help transfer 45-minute music on 1/4" Reel tape (already mastered) to CD, Flash Drive, or Memory Card? Thank you.

Do you mean the normal cassette tape? If yes I ll ask my former colleagues if they can assist.

Nice. Interesting signature.

Maldives also.....but Schelles is not bad

Sarimah:
Maldives

That's more than enough motivation my dear. Cheers and all the very best!

Cherlene:
Thank You.
My motivation is:
-To be able to cook a variety of Nigerian food
- Experience new tastes and food ingredients
- To be capable to cook for my partner[Nigerian]

Cherlene

Nice and courageous Charlene. I'm just curious, what is the motivation.

Nice and courageous Charlene. I m just curious. What's the motivation?

Cherlene:
Good evening Nairalanders,

I am CHEERFUL sharing a few of MY FIRST ATTEMPTS preparing delicious Nigerian food recipes.

Below I will upload mouthwatering images of
- Peppersoup and yam
- Moin moin
- Puff Puff
- Yam and stew

Note: All images are taken by me, and PREPARED by me. I am still in the process of learning to cook a range of Nigerian food.

Regards,
Cherlene.

I am on cap. I hope is now non confusing sir.

zasd:
Lol..modify your quote, it's confusing.

[font=Lucida Sans Unicode][/font]If you attend a wedding you are not invited to, what is it called? Well that's what happened to me last month in the United States. After my conference in South Carolina,I hooked up with my cousin in Tennessee. He was the invited guest to the occasion . So I told him we dey feature at the wedding together anyhow. Shey I come all the way from naija con dey dull at home ni? All work and no play, they say make a certain person dull. I wan enjoy my short stay for this country. I just enter my white, sleeveless, starched native from Lasgidi.
The wedding is between Joy (Caucasian) and Levon(Afro-American). The main wedding itself took less than 10 minutes. Couples exchanged vows and rings and it's time for entertainments. Brought some pictures. And trust me,I gave them some SHOKI.

ahsekeena:
Awesome!


I'm gonna Bookmark this page...would love to learn some of these words

I just bookmarked the page. I am sanguine you ll find those words useful, just like me.

When APC was campaigning PDP was busy looking for Buhari WAEC now you can see the result. ‪#‎ChangeHasCome‬

teamb:
pls all the gurus I need help in unlocking Samsung s4 9505 the phone is from UK
pls help a brother here

Check the network: it should be Lte/Wcdma/Gsm. If that is the case, there is hope. But it it's only CDMA, might be an issue.

Hi all,
Was on a recent trip to the United States for an Engineering Conference in South Carolina. On my way back to the country, I have to connect Doha (HIA) via New York (JFK), before final flight to Lagos (LOS). It was a very long journey though, but it was worth it. Please enjoy the beautiful view of New York City at night.

If you wan't to establish why a plane crashed, you need to retrieve the black box. This virtually indestructible orange device records all relevant flight data and conversations in the cockpit.

For specialists at the German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (BFU) in Braunschweig, evaluating data recorded by a black box is routine.

"I think we receive something like this every other week or so," said Jens Friedemann, spokesman for the BFU. "But such evaluations are also for incidents that aren't so spectacular, so-called serious incidents." And by serious incidents, Friedemann means events where a flight narrowly averted disaster.

Essentially, a black box flight recorder is heavily protected recording device, similar to a hard disk or a memory card. The black box records all relevant flight data, in addition to conversations in the cockpit. Previously, this data had to be recorded on two different devices. But today there are also units that can do both. According to regulations, however, every airplane must have two of these devices on board.

[b][/b] Robust, easy to find
A black box must be able to withstand many accident scenarios without sustaining damage. Before being put into use, they are tested to see if they can withstand an impact with a concrete wall at 750 kilometers per hour (about 466 miles/hour), a static load of 2.25 tons for at least five minutes, a maximum temperature 1,100 degrees Celsius (2,012 Fahrenheit) for one hour and water pressure found in depths of up to 6,000 meters (about 19,700 feet).

[b][/b]Everything recorded

In order to be easier to find at sea, the devices send out a signal on contact with salt water that can be picked up within a radius of about two kilometers (1.2 miles). At such a short range, the location of the wreck should already be more or less pinpointed in order to find the device.

The voice recorder logs all sounds in the cockpit. In addition to discussions between the pilots, it also records automatic computer announcements, radio traffic, discussions with the crew and announcements to the passengers. The sounds of switches and engine are also recorded by the device.

Private conversations between the pilots are also stored on the black box - which is why the captured audio files must be handled carefully, from a data protection point of view. Discussions can only be evaluated in order to clarify accidents or malfunctions. For this reason, the recordings are overwritten after a maximum of 120 minutes; older devices only record 30 minutes. Technically, it's even possible for pilots to stop or delete a recording. In practice, however, BFU's Friedemann said pilots don't make use of that feature.

[b][/b]Ever increasing data quantities
But when it comes to the flight recorder, the second component of the black box, pilots are not able to directly access stored files. In older aircraft, they need to switch on the devices before flight; in modern aircraft, it's automatic.
The amount of data collected has increased significantly in recent years. "Today, hundreds, sometimes thousands of parameters are recorded there," says Friedemann. This includes information on things like the flight path, altitude, aircraft location, speed, temperature of the engine and exhaust, as well as flap positions, among many others.

The data helps experts investigate the cause of an accident or serious incident and reduce the potential sources for error. However, investigators do not fully reconstruct a flight.

"We don't use a flight simulator or animation - we're able to get information from the parameters themselves," said Friedemann.

There are only a few specialized agencies worldwide capable of evaluating a black box, and not every agency is able to examine the various models. The BFU can evaluate both Western and Russian devices. But with some models, the experts in Braunschweig must turn to foreign labs for help with the data.

In the future, Friedemann believes that video devices will record certain displays in the cockpit, and that the transmission power of the locator signal through water will be improved.

Incidentally, the so-called black box has never actually been black. The color is predetermined: bright orange.

Source:http://www.dw.de/how-does-a-black-box-work/a-17907283

It is said that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Perhaps, a worse fate awaits those who willfully distort history. The current election cycle has featured a great deal of historical distortion aimed at discrediting the opposition presidential challenger, the former Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari. Partisan revisionists have sought to portray Buhari as an unrepentant despot who once truncated our democracy.

As all propagandists understand, the most potent lie is a half-truth, the de-contextualised fact garnished with enough circumstantial happenstance to sound superficially plausible. To the historically illiterate, these anti-Buhari canards resonate because they are projected against a blank canvas of ignorance about an era that has largely faded from memory. These narratives must be challenged if only to reclaim our history. To truly understand Buhari’s first coming, we must understand the epoch that birthed it. There is no better way of recapturing that temporal context than through the eyes and words of those who witnessed it.

To begin with, Buhari’s advent on the last day of 1983 was warmly welcomed by Nigerians as a relief from the Second Republic politicians whose excesses had finally grown insufferable. In his book, The Fall of the Second Republic, Ladipo Adamolekun observed that as early as April 1982, the Nigerian economy was paralysed by an oil glut which politicians compounded by committing significant proportions of available funds at all levels of government to election campaigns. Several state governments were unable to pay the salaries of their employees and in a few states, schools were closed for several months. Between 1982 and 1983, there was virtually no educational or health institution that received adequate funding. In several states, these critical social services were near collapse. “The Nigerian society of the second half of 1983,” Adamolekun wrote, “was characterized by moral decadence, economic paralysis and moral decay.”

Shagari’s violent and fraudulent 1983 “moonslide” re-election victory was anything but democratic. The radical historian, Bala Usman regarded the Shagari administration as a fascist regime. This was the era in which the mobile police earned the pseudonym “kill-and-go” for its horrific record of extra-judicial executions. The real question posed by the military intervention is that of what remedial options a society has when its elected leadership becomes demonstrably despotic and embezzles its way into illegitimacy.

In December 1984, West Africa magazine described Buhari’s emergence as “the beginning of a national reckoning” for an era that Adamolekun described as “the golden age of corruption.” Between 1979 and 1983, Nigeria lost over $14 billion to capital flight. President Shehu Shagari’s ouster did not surprise astute observers. In 1982, the New Times magazine had warned presciently in an editorial that “if corruption continues unabated and the ship of state is left adrift, the prospect of a military takeover is not only inevitable but will be supported by the masses.” In his memoirs, Power and the Press, the journalist Tunde Thompson, who was famously jailed by the Buhari regime recalled that the military intervention “was welcomed by virtually every Nigerian except those who benefitted from the system through contract awards, board appointments, diplomatic postings and several other ways.”

The new government detained 475 former politicians and businessmen on suspicion of having “contributed to the (country’s) economic adversity.” In its first year in office, 14 former governors were tried and convicted on various charges of corruption and abuse of office. Well over N10 million and nearly £3 million were recovered and over a thousand years in jail terms had been issued, although almost all sentences were to run concurrently. The former governors of Anambra and Kano, Jim Nwobodo and Sabo Bakin Zuwo, received nearly three-century-long prison terms.

The regime reintroduced the death penalty for armed robbery and public executions for offences ranging from arson to cocaine trafficking and warned that it would not refrain from any measure, however severe, that would set the country on “the path of sanity.” As Buhari himself said in 1984, “By the time the military has finished dealing with those who wrecked the nation, none but the dedicated would seek public office in future.” Latter day bleeding-hearts and fair-weather humanitarians who contend that these stiff punishments being meted out contravened human rights have completely misread the tenor of public opinion at the time. As the New African editorialised in July 1984, “the arrest of former politicians and their aides” was “probably the single most popular action” of the new regime.

Buhari had several supporters in civil society who believed that only a radical surgery could excise the cancer of corruption from the society. The journalist, Nelson Ottah remarked in the March 1985 edition of Monthly Life that, “To help her get back on her feet, Nigeria must first and foremost be clothed in iron discipline, regardless of what it will cost us to achieve.” Similarly, the political commentator, Lindsay Barrett, writing in Africa Now in January 1984, argued that “the measure of Nigeria’s public indiscipline has attained such chronic dimensions that only a firm and successful programme of reorientation of priorities and of methods of service can ensure the maintenance of a stable nation.”

In a New Times interview in August 1985, the renowned public intellectual, Chike Obi, praised Buhari for sending “the regime of expert thieves into oblivion.” Chinua Achebe hailed the jailing of corrupt politicians and told The African Guardian of November 1988 that he saw the incarcerations as “a new element in the political culture. Things can never be the same again.” Although he expressed misgivings about the length of the prison sentences, Achebe believed that “the idea that somebody could go from state house to Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison is extremely important. And it is an idea that ought to live in the consciousness of our people whether they are going to be leaders or the led.”

Achebe’s book, The Trouble with Nigeria, published in 1983, was a lacerating critique of the Second Republic. He drew attention to the twin evils assailing Nigeria – corruption and indiscipline. “Indiscipline pervades our life so completely today that one may call it the condition par excellence of contemporary Nigerian society,” he wrote, “Corruption in Nigeria has passed the alarming and entered the fatal stage; and Nigeria will die if we keep pretending that she is only slightly indisposed.” Buhari evidently agreed with Achebe’s summation. In his first address to the nation, he highlighted “corruption and indiscipline” as “the two evils in our body politic” that had “attained unprecedented heights in the past four years.”

Consequently, the Buhari regime launched a War Against Indiscipline (WAI), a program of moral rearmament designed to instil public orderliness, revive the work ethic and create a national consciousness. WAI addressed little but significant manifestations of indiscipline such as public disorderliness, cheating, shunting queues, tax evasion and filthy environments. In May 1985, Africa magazine reported that a year after the launch of WAI, there was “a recognizable evidence of orderliness at banks and post offices…a visible drop in ostentation, improved work habits” as well as “greater punctuality at workplaces.” The New African of December 1984 also declared that WAI had “largely successfully, confronted the private and public disorderliness that hitherto marked Nigerian urban life.”

There was public outcry when, in early 1985, three convicted drug dealers were executed by firing squad under a newly promulgated decree with retroactive effect. Another trio of drug dealers, including Gladys Iyamah, a mother of two paraplegic children, was sentenced to death. The regime recognised that publicly executing a woman would make for terrible visuals and ordered her execution in private at Kirikiri Maximum security prison. However, as the historian Max Siollun records in Soldiers of Fortune, his masterful study of that period, the sentence was never carried out.

A staunch defender of the regime’s drastic approach to drug trafficking was the great civil rights lawyer Gani Fawehinmi who argued that the executions were deserved punishment for “messengers of death” whose “products dehumanise and send their victims to an untimely death.” As reported in the April 29, 1985 edition of Newswatch magazine, Gani also advocated the death penalty for officials that filched public funds and asserted that “a revolution is not achieved by kid or velvet gloves but by blood, pain and pangs.”

Gani’s stance reflected the widely held belief that Buhari’s brand of tough love was needed to halt Nigeria’s slide into moral anarchy. One might argue that had this zero tolerance for crime endured, Nigeria would not have become an infamous trans-shipment point for drugs thus averting the now customary humiliating treatment of Nigerians at foreign airports and the frequent execution of young Nigerian drug mules in Asia. Second-guessing the Buhari regime’s policies now with prejudicial hindsight and without regard for context or even factual accuracy is poor analysis.

Many reasons have been cited to explain the Buhari regime’s eventual ouster. Arguably, it was fighting on too many fronts. Its tribunals – though initially popular – lost some support because of their secrecy, the lack of appeal rights, the presumption of guilt, and the long sentences. The regime was overly sensitive to criticism and unnecessarily antagonised civil society whose support it needed. It paid insufficient attention to the public relations of its reform programme – which was compounded by the persistent challenge of addressing the disastrous economic legacies of the ruinous Second Republic.

However, the biggest threat to the Buhari regime stemmed from its anti-graft campaign. Max Siollun points out that Buhari’s tough stance on crime and corruption and his use of capital punishment for drug trafficking threatened the lives and livelihoods of powerful elites involved in such practices. These endangered forces ultimately orchestrated his overthrow before he could move against them.

Three decades after his forced exit from power, Buhari’s conversion as a democrat is complete. There is no sense of a man intent on applying the illiberal methods of 1984 to 21st century Nigeria. While he retains his integrity as well as his obsession with official probity and public order, Buhari 2.0 is as acutely aware of the constitutional limits on presidential powers as he is of the presidency’s tremendous latitude for exemplary and decisive leadership.

It is significant that even those who suffered the Buhari regime’s Draconian measures such as Tunde Thompson, Audu Ogbeh, Adeyemi Adefulu and Lola Shoneyin, whose father was jailed, now support Buhari’s candidacy. They contend that Nigeria is adrift and that Buhari, with his disciplinarian conservatism now tempered by over a decade of democratic activism and a supporting cast of liberal progressives, is the clear alternative to an incumbent who claims that Jim Nwobodo did not steal enough to warrant jail.

Buhari’s traducers are perhaps petrified by the parallels between the last days of the Second Republic and our times. Then as now, rampant official corruption, impunity, legions of unpaid civil servants and an economic recession induced by an oil price collapse and epic profligacy overseen by a derelict and permissive presidency had set the stage for an inevitable reckoning. Ruling politicians fear precisely such a reckoning and see in Buhari, a man with the courage and moral authority to conduct it. They also fear that this time Buhari will have in his second coming something he lacked in his first – a democratic mandate.

Chris Ngwodo is a writer, political analyst and consultant.

source: http://blogs.premiumtimesng.com/?p=167031

Everybody plays the " Maga" role sometimes. There is no exception to the rule.

The Nigerian Government has signed an MoU with One Nation Energy Limited to set up a 500MW power plant in Nigeria’s Enugu state
power-timitrius-flickrEnugu state has abundant reserves of coal, which would be used to generate electricity. (Image source: Timitrius/Flickr)
The power plant would be used to generate electricity from coal, since Enugu state is known to have vast reserves of coal, stated Chinedu Nebo, minister of power.
Enugu state’s coal deposits are in three layers when compared with other parts of the country that have one layer of the resource deposited at a point, all across large stretches in the other eight states, he added.
Uzoma Obiyo, CEO of One Nation Energy added that Nigerian coal deposits were very clean and processing the mineral resource for energy delivery would not be cumbersome. According to the CEO, the South-East had enough coal deposits to deliver about 5,000MW electricity.
The coal-to-power development plan will lead the growth of Nigeria, stated Obiyo. Coal is an essential part of the country’s Energy Mix Plan, and power generation from coal would also diversify the commercial production of electricity.

Source: http://africanreview.com/energy-a-power/power-generation/nigeria-signs-mou-with-one-nation-energy-to-develop-500mw-coal-power-plant