₦airaland Forum

Babe2sure:
Lickable in what sense?

Sense of belonging is lacking in some young adults

1.0M Immediate Cash or Transfer (whichever you like)

I am interest in buying the Ford Explorer 2008 Model being offered for sale by a senior colleague in the office. He just got a new official ride and wants to sell this off. It was bought newly and wholly Nigeria-use since 2009.

All the reviews I saw online commented well on its off-road performance. The major snag being fuel consumption.

Anyone out there who has used this SUV or using it and can comment/ review the performance.

JustifiedChild: No you are not allowed to sleep with your wife during the fast. After all sex itself is a form of pleasure Read 1 cor 7:5.
But you guys can meet when you break your fast. After all you are going to break your fast at a particular time everyday, am I right?
Also I hope you know that fasting isn't just about depriving yourself of food and water o but whatever gives you pleasure..so if you are a nairaland addict for instance, you have to stay away during the time your fast. When you break, you can log back in.
Happy fasting sir.

If I can meet her after breaking the fast is what I'm asking and is it biblically supported explicitly.

Acidosis: btw, hope you paid your 'wife's' dowry? if you didn't, then shes not even your wife yet...

Thanks man!

And yes, I paid my wife's dowry. Thanks for asking.

lomprico: What dose fasting entail? Loco!

You can respond without resulting to insult. Try it. Its possible.

I am a married man, attend the RCCG and currently observing the 100 days fasting and prayer as directed by God through the General Overseer.

Some set of people are excepted from the fasting for valid reasons. However, I need to know if being intimate with my wife during the fasting period is allowed? Body no be wood o! If I am feeling like this after 4 days, I dont want to go and commit before the end of the fast o.

For the spiritually matured and married, please assist to answer the questions with biblical references. I have searched the scriptures and unable to locate any definite passage that addresses the topic of abstinence from intimacy during fasting.

The all-time World Cup finals league table

The World Cup kicks off six months from today, hosted by five-times winners Brazil. As a nation, Brazil's knack of winning the tournament is well renowned and many supporters will have them as firm favourites to win a sixth trophy.

But what if the World Cup was a league? This chart imagines what an all-time league ranking might look like.

We've allocated three points for a win and a point for a draw for all group and knockout stages since 1930. You can search by team, total points and points per game. You might be surprised by some of the results.


Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-25233859

pistol: Almost all commercial banks in owerri today were shut down.
I heard that the problem stems from the fact that they were having problems with rochas who directed them to pay taxes to the state government.
Everybody is stranded right now.
My question is do banks pay tax to the state government that they are domiciled even after paying tax to the FIRS?

Different organs of government collect different taxes.

For a state, the taxes they collect include PAYE (Personal Income Tax) which you pay to the state where you reside (Residency Law). There is also State tax of 5% on COT or Capitalized Interest in your Savings account. There are a few other charges. These two are the highest in terms of value for any state government.

So, sentiments asides, State governments do collect taxes.

Nelson Mandela was a figure of international renown, and many details of his life and career were public knowledge. But here are six things you may not have known about the late South African leader.


1. He was a boxing fan.

In his youth, Nelson Mandela enjoyed boxing and long-distance running. Even during the 27 years he spent in prison, he would exercise every morning.

"I did not enjoy the violence of boxing so much as the science of it. I was intrigued by how one moved one's body to protect oneself, how one used a strategy both to attack and retreat, how one paced oneself over a match," he wrote in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.

"Boxing is egalitarian. In the ring, rank, age, colour and wealth are irrelevant... I never did any real fighting after I entered politics. My main interest was in training; I found the rigorous exercise to be an excellent outlet for tension and stress. After a strenuous workout, I felt both mentally and physically lighter," he wrote.

Among the memorabilia in the Mandela Family Museum in Soweto, visitors can find the world championship belt given to Mandela by American boxer Sugar Ray Leonard.

2. His original name was not Nelson.

Rolihlahla Mandela was nine years old when a teacher at the primary Methodist school where he was studying in Qunu, South Africa, gave him an English name - Nelson - in accordance with the custom to give all school children Christian names.

This was common practice in South Africa and in other parts of the continent, where a person could often be given an English name that foreigners would find easier to pronounce.

Rolihlahla is not a common name in South Africa. It is Xhosa, one of the 11 official languages in the country, spoken by about 18% of the population. It literally means "pulling the branch of a tree", but its colloquial meaning is "troublemaker".

His circumcision name was Dalibunga, meaning "founder of the Bunga", the traditional ruling body of the Transkei - the rural area where he was born. "To Xhosa traditionalists, this name is more acceptable than either of my two previous given names," he wrote in his autobiography. However, in South Africa, Mr Mandela was often called by his clan name - Madiba - which South Africans used out of respect.

3. He was on a US terror watch list until 2008.

Prior to that, along with other former ANC leaders, Mr Mandela was only able to visit the US with special permission from the secretary of state, because the ANC had been designated a terrorist organisation by South Africa's former apartheid government.

It is frankly a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterparts - the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader, Nelson Mandela," then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in 2008.

The bill scrapping the designation was introduced by Howard Berman, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, who promised to "wipe away" the "indignity".

Ronald Reagan originally placed the ANC on the list in the 1980s.

4. He forgot his glasses when he was released from prison.

Mr Mandela's release on 11 February 1990 followed years of political pressure against apartheid. On the day, he was "astounded and a little bit alarmed", he recalled later.

Mr Mandela and his then-wife Winnie were taken to the centre of Cape Town to address a huge and euphoric crowd. But when he pulled out the text of his speech, he realised he had forgotten his glasses and had to borrow Winnie's.

5. He dressed up as a chauffeur to evade police.

After going underground because of his ANC activities, Mr Mandela's ability to evade the securities services earned him the nickname "the black Pimpernel", after the novel The Scarlet Pimpernel, about a hero with a secret identity.

Mr Mandela is known to have disguised himself as a chauffeur, a gardener and a chef in order to travel around the country unnoticed by the authorities. Nobody seems to know how Mr Mandela, who had been operating underground with a false identity, was ultimately exposed and arrested.

6. He had his own law firm, but it took him years to get a law degree.

Mr Mandela studied law on and off for 50 years from 1939, failing about half the courses he took.

A two-year diploma in law on top of his university degree allowed him to practice, and in August 1952, he and Oliver Tambo established South Africa's first black law firm, Mandela and Tambo, in Johannesburg.

He persevered to finally secure a law degree while in prison in 1989.


Source: BBC

(CNN) -- Imagine being out to dinner with the love of your life and your beautiful, smiling, 3-year-old child. It's a double celebration: your birthday and the end of your young boy's difficult recovery from surgery for a heart defect.

As you cross the street afterward, holding hands and swinging the little one up in the air, you think, "This is what it's about."

You know it's one of the best days of your life.

For Michael Morton, that day was August 12, 1986. He had just turned 32.

The next day, it was all taken away. The dream became a nightmare.

Christine, his wife, was attacked and killed at their home in Williamson County, Texas, just outside Austin. Michael Morton was at work at the time. Still, authorities suspected him.

"Innocent people think that if you just tell the truth then you've got nothing to fear from the police," Morton says now. "If you just stick to it that the system will work, it'll all come to light, everything will be fine."

Instead, Morton was charged, ripped away from his boy, and put on trial. The prosecutor, speaking to the jury in emotional terms with tears streaming down his face, laid out a graphic, depraved sexual scenario, accusing Morton of bludgeoning his wife for refusing to have sex on his birthday.

"There was no scientific evidence, there was no eyewitness, there was no murder weapon, there was no believable motive," Morton says. "... I didn't see how any rational, thinking person would say that's enough for a guilty verdict."

But with no other suspects, the jury convicted him. "We all felt so strongly that this was justice for Christine and that we were doing the right thing," says Mark Landrum, who was the jury foreman.

Morton spent nearly 25 years in prison.

He saw his son Eric only twice a year. "I would love seeing him, I was fascinated with his every move," Morton says. But Eric "was becoming more distant," Morton says. "He was becoming less mine."

As a teen, Eric had no memories of his father outside of prison. Letters his dad wrote him were "just a window into a life that never happened," he says. His father "barely existed in my life. I didn't have memories of him outside of the visits to prison."

Eric decided to stop visiting. "I think it was embarrassing for me to think that I had to go to jail to see my dad."

Michael Morton wrote Eric saying he had to come and tell him that in person. He did.

"It was another one of those numb, painful things," Morton says. "I just looked at my sister-in-law and said something like, 'Take care of my son.'"

Eric also changed his last name to that of the relatives who raised him.


http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/04/justice/exonerated-prisoner-update-michael-morton/index.html

Mercygirl: A2 is around 46k to 50k, A+ is around 35k to 4ok.
Am nt too sure abt d price but dats d online price I got.

Got an A2, from Computer Village, over the weekend and the cost was 42K. It really depends on where you buy it.

On warranty, as long as its a Tecno authorized dealer, you'll get the 12+1 month warranty.

Double wahala for dead body . . .

How sad

EXCLUSIVE: Nigeria Police hijack controversial car registration project from firm that offered services for N500

http://premiumtimesng.com/news/145847-exclusive-nigeria-police-hijack-controversial-car-registration-project-from-firm-that-offered-services-for-n500.html#/jobs

Nigeria police’s latest car registration effort, which has drawn outrage over its mandatory N3, 500 charge on motorists, was founded on a shady process that involved police authorities rejecting a far more affordable alternative that would have cost only N500, PREMIUM TIMES can authoritatively report today.

After its repeated failure at rolling out the digitalized car registry, the police finally received a proposal for the job from a local tech firm that offered to exclusively fund the project, train police personnel, and charge Nigerians only N500 per car.

At the rate, PREMIUM TIMES has found, estimated profit for the project would have been N50 per unit, to be shared equally between the police and the firm, according to a Memorandum of Understanding reached by both sides in 2011.

But the force has since unilaterally jettisoned that agreement, and now stipulates a new cost of N3,500-about 600 percent higher- for the registration of every car under the scheme, in violation of a senate decision in 2012, ordering the suspension of the charge.

At N3, 500 per user, police authorities will net about N140 billion from Nigerians, based on estimates by the Federal Road Safety Corp, FRSC, that Nigeria is home to between 35 million and 40 million cars. The amount does not include the N1, 500 charged per motorcycle.

The police has not provided explanations why it raised the cost of the project by 600 percent, or why it discarded the agreement with the tech firm.

Police spokesperson, Frank Mba, denied that the project was ever approved for N500, or that it was opposed by the Senate. He said the initial consideration was N5, 000, but was only reviewed downwards by the current Inspector General of police, Mohammed Abubakar, as a mark of “respect to Nigerians”.

“Nobody said N500, otherwise the media would have come up with the evidence by now,” Mr. Mba said.

But through interviews with the force personnel, and other government officials, as well as the review of several project-related documents, PREMIUM TIMES has obtained damning details that now raise serious questions about the true intent of the registration project.

The police claims the technology will naturally be deployed against crime and terrorism. But a distrustful public has accused the force of imposing an extra burden on Nigerians, for a purpose already served by the FRSC, and whose main drive is certain to be monetary.

Under the Memorandum of Understanding, MOU, agreed to by the police and the company, 2TOC Solution Limited, the police was to spend no kobo on the scheme, beyond providing the firm with an operational accommodation, identification for its staff, and making available the police’s communication infrastructure, the documents show.

In turn, the firm was to provide the required funding, train police personnel in the relevant department, and operate the scheme for a minimum of five years.

“The RCCS Project cost is Four Hundred and Fifty Naira (N450.00) in every Five Hundred Naira to which a profit of Fifty Naira (N50.00) on every registration shall accrue; this shall be shared on a 50:50 basis between the parties; and shall be remitted to the force on quarterly basis,” the MOU, authored by the police legal department, and signed by the two sides on January 25, 2011, said.

While Audu Abubakar, a Deputy Inspector General of police, and Jubril Adeniji, a Commissioner of Police, signed for the Nigeria Police, Benson Olatunji, 2TOC’s Chief Executive Officer, and Abba Kasim, the company’s Executive Director, signed for the tech firm.

The amount agreed then, is a far cry from the N3, 500 the police is currently asking the public to pay for the registration.

The exercise is expected to cover the cost of creating a digital data record and backup, a plastic identification card and hand-held verification device, prospects the police says will prove key against car theft and terrorism.

But beyond raising the cost of the proposed registration, PREMIUM TIMES has found how the entire project has been riddled with police’s flouting of instructions and advice, including those from the Senate and the Joint Tax Board.

The first opposition to the project came from the Joint Tax Board in 2011. The Board, which harmonizes the various taxes payable by the public, said in 2011 that the scheme was “laudable” as the nation faced insecurity, but advised that the N500 per head be financed by the police, and not by Nigerians.

“..Nigeria police should finance and own the project since the project is laudable and will enhance national security,” the board said in December 2011 letter.

That position was followed months later by a motion by the Senate, asking that the project be suspended. Both instructions were flouted.

While the police pushed on with the project against the Senate’s opposition, it did so at public cost against the advice of the Joint Tax Board, and even so, at an outlandish rate more than the Board opposed.

Senators are said to be considering a new motion on the case. A spokesperson for the senate, Enyinayya Abaribe, did not respond to our calls for confirmation.

The controversy over the registration project dates back to the Olusegun Obasanjo administration and stretched into the Umaru Yar’Adua government.

Both administrations rejected the plan as illegal, and advised the police to team with the FRSC for a centralized, digitalized car registration.

The latest project began in 2010 after 2TOC Solution Limited contacted the police and sought to partner with the force for the plan, according to police official records.

PREMIUM TIMES has obtained letters showing how former Inspector General of Police, Hafiz Ringim, was first briefed about the programme in 2010, and how he approved the project after he became convinced it would help tackle car bombings and theft.

police biometric central motor registration

After the endorsement, the prototype was demonstrated before police authorities and the media, and the sum of N500 was announced as unit price, culminating in the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the two sides.

According to the MOU, the police and the technology firm were to deliver on their responsibilities for the deal.

But while the company began deploying its equipment and staff to commence work, the police withheld its staff from the agreed training and did not budge throughout 2011 and 2012.

Throughout the period, police officials reportedly said the proposal was still being considered and would soon take off.

What followed was the decision by the force in 2013, to unilaterally roll out the plan, defying the senate resolution, and the Joint Tax Board.

A spokesperson for 2TOC, Soji Bamidele, declined to comment for this story, but however confirmed our findings that the company had an agreement with the police to implement the project.

You wan go steal and you chop beans! Why shit no go catch you?

Oleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee . . . . . . . .

In the midst of all the comments and posts, people are not asking the real questions.

The money for financing the construction came from somewhere. Both equity and debt financing, I'm assuming. So, how and with with what money will LASG pay the investors? The State would probably go borrowing again to pay the debts.

Lagosians would now be saddened with the burden of an ineffective civil service system playing out on the highways in addition to the 'extra' debt burden

The toll plaza would no longer work. Everything that is presently wrong with the civil service would begin to manifest.

For the investors though, they have nothing to lose as they would collect their money to the last kobo or cent. Its the ordinary Lagosian that would feel the heat, the most.

Damojo: Everybody here is criticizing that the guy should have used the pedestrian bridge. What if he did and get robbed on the bridge and he's thrown down by a hoodlum. Did you see the time? 10:45PM! May God help us, they should just create well-lit pedestrian bridges in the state, put baricades around the crossing areas and make life worth living for its citizens. DAMN! God help my nation!!

Oga Damojo,

That bridge has lighting. In fact, the entire Ikorodu Road is lit at night all the way to Mile 12. There was barricade at that particular spot (and several other spots on the Road) but people tore it down.

If the guy got robbed on the bridge as you implied, he "may" still have his life.

I am not apportioning blame to anyone here. However, whatever decision we take in life has risks. I guess he took the risk that led to his demise.

RIP to him anyways.

Shortage of posts to move to Front Page makes Seun move a post uploaded 5 years ago (6:46am on Aug 07, 2008) to Front Page.

Hmmnn . . .

Paulo Henrique Machado has lived almost his entire life in hospital. As a baby he suffered infantile paralysis brought on by polio, and he is still hooked up to an artificial respirator 24 hours a day. But despite this, he has trained as a computer animator and is now creating a television series about his life.

The Brazilian's first memories are of exploring the hospital he has lived in for 45 years by wheelchair.

"I explored up and down the corridors, going into the rooms of other children that were here - that is how I discovered my 'universe'," he says.

"For me, playing football or with normal toys wasn't an option, so it was more about using my imagination."

Machado's mother died when he was two days old, and as a baby he contracted polio - the result of one of the last big outbreaks of the disease in Brazil.

Ligia Marcia Fizeto, Machado's nursing assistant, began working in the hospital - Sao Paulo's Clinicas - shortly after he arrived.

"It was very sad to see all those children, all lying there immobilised in their beds, or with very little movement," she says.

In the 1970s, children with polio were encased in a "torpedo" - a body-encasing iron lung - and doctors at the hospital gave grim assessments of the children's prospects. Few in the "polio ward" were expected to reach adolescence - their life expectancy was just 10 years.

With very limited mobility, Machado's world formed around the friends he made on the ward.

"There was me, Eliana, Pedrinho, Anderson, Claudia, Luciana and Tania. They were here for a good length of time too, more than 10 years," he says.

With the innocence of childhood, he never imagined that they would be parted. But by 1992, some of the children had begun to deteriorate - one by one, his friends began to die.

"It was difficult," says Machado. "Each loss was like a dismembering, you know, physical… like a mutilation," he says. "Now, there's just two of us left - me and Eliana."


Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23364127

Source: BBC News

Americans began July celebrating their independence from colonial rule. Less than three weeks later, many are rejoicing at the birth of a royal baby boy.

It is one of the great American paradoxes that a country which got rid of the monarchy in 1776 continues to lavish so much attention on the Royal Family.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23413359

iamswizz: Well.. Our own president was always mistaken as a:

1. Clown
2. Retardeen
3. Fisherman
4. Otuoke fishFarmer
5. Retardeen again.

... And has he disproved to be none or all of the above, even as President.

#justasking

According to a survey carried out in 95 countries by Transparency International, one person in four has paid a bribe to a public body in the last year.

The poor record of some African nations on bribery stands out. Sierra Leone has the highest number of respondents admitting to having paid a bribe - 84% - and seven out of nine of the countries with the highest reported bribery rate are in sub-Saharan Africa. See the list below. The countries with the lowest reported bribery rate are Denmark, Finland, Japan and Australia, they all have a bribery rate of 1%.

Source: Transparency International, Global Corruption Barometer, 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23231318

Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer gathered data from 95 countries on bribery. For a small number of them, including Brazil and Russia, data on particular questions has been excluded because of concerns about validity and reliability. For the question on corrupt institutions 105 countries were covered.

The margin of error for each country is 3%. The typical sample size is 1,000 people. Four countries - Cyprus, Luxembourg, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands - have a sample size of 500 people and a margin of error of 4%.

Nigeria sits "uncomfortably" in the 22nd position with 44%, 17% above the world average.

Scene from an upcoming Nollywood movie . . .

dats all!!!

Doug Engelbart, who has died aged 88, never really made any money from inventing the mouse. Here are 10 others who didn't get to be billionaires.

1. LEDs
When Nick Holonyak Jr invented the first practically useful LED in 1962 he predicted it would one day replace Edison's lightbulb. Holonyak's colleagues have said he should be given the Nobel Prize but he humbly says: "It's ridiculous to think that somebody owes you something. We're lucky to be alive, when it comes down to it."

2. Post-It Notes
3M sell billions of Post-It Notes each year but its inventors describe themselves as "comfortably off" not wealthy. They were the co-creation of Dr Spencer Silver, who in 1968 developed an adhesive that had a "removability characteristic", and his colleague Art Fry hit on the idea of a bookmark that would stay in place in his hymnbook.

3. AK-47
The Kalashnikov rifle, or AK-47, was invented by Soviet Army soldier Mikhail Kalashnikov while recovering in hospital from injuries sustained in World War II. Kalashnikov claimed his creation was for the benefit of his country.

4. Sapphire stylus
Marie Killick invented a sapphire stylus for a record player but could not license it and despite years of litigation never made any money. In 1958 she won a lawsuit against Pye but went bankrupt the following year.

5. Hovercraft
Sir Christopher Cockerell used a vacuum cleaner and tin cans to test his theories as he developed the hovercraft, which first crossed between Calais and Dover in 1959. Cockerell was knighted but fought for years to get a lump sum from the National Research Development Corporation.

6. Tetris
Russian computer programmer Alexey Pajitnov's game Tetris was developed alongside colleagues at a Russian government-funded research centre in 1985. He only started getting royalties 10 years later when he formed The Tetris Company.

7. The Wind-Up Radio
Inventor Trevor Baylis recently said he can no longer afford to live in his home in Twickenham, London, because despite millions of sales around the globe, the company he went into business with were able to tweak his design and he lost control over the product and profits.

"Most of us don't do it for the money but for the buzz," says Baylis. "I know that at least I've left my mark with the radio, the wind-up torch and other things I've invented."

8. Karaoke machines
Japanese businessman Daisuke Inoue made money from playing drums in a backing band which let bar goers take the mic and have a go at singing. One time when he couldn't make a gig he put the backing music on tape instead and later made 11 Karaoke (empty orchestra) machines which he leased out. He didn't patent his invention and barely made a yen.

9. MP3
The MP3 quickly became the standard for transferring music over the internet. German PhD student Karlheinz Brandenburg started work on the project in the 1980s but because there was no money to distribute the software it was marketed as shareware.

10. World Wide Web
And finally, no-one would have stumbled across this list save for Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who created the web to help scientists working at the European research lab at Cern. He says the secret of the rapid success of his invention was the fact he made it freely available.

Not all inventors are driven to make money but some want to make a contribution to the "common good", says Dr Tilly Blyth, Keeper of Engineering and Technology at the Science Museum.

"We tend to focus on the commercial development but in fact its often public and government research that has got it to that stage," Dr Blyth says. "If you look at the iPhone you think it's a great invention from Steve Jobs and Apple but look at the vital components like the screen, the chip and the processor and their origins were all in government-funded research."

"A lot of the real cutting-edge research comes from the pure and blue sky thinking done in public research facilities for the good of humanity rather than to make money."


Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23179103

koolkesh: Is it the engine or the body?

The whole car, actually . . .

Or are you dismembering, and selling the parts?

Interested....

However, I need to see more pics especially of the inside of the car. You can send the pics to my email anonymous.lasgidi@gmail.com

Interested... and willing to pay N1.2M.

US actor and karate expert Jim Kelly, who starred with Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, has died at the age of 67.

Kelly became famed for his cool one-liners and fight scenes as the charismatic Williams in the 1973 martial arts classic.

His other films included Black Belt Jones, Three the Hard Way, Golden Needles and the Black Samurai.

Marilyn Dishman, Kelly's ex-wife, said he died on Saturday of cancer at his home in California.

Enter the Dragon is considered to be one of the most popular kung fu films of all time, it was Lee's first film in the English language and was released days after his death at the age of 32.

In the 1980s, Kelly re-trained as a professional tennis coach.


Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23125488


In an interview with the LA Times in 2010, Kelly said: "I broke down the colour barrier - I was the first black martial artist to become a movie star. It's amazing to see how many people still remember that, because I haven't really done much, in terms of movies, in a long time."

He added: "I never left the movie business. It's just that after a certain point, I didn't get the type of projects that I wanted to do. I still get at least three scripts per year, but most of them don't put forth a positive image.

"There's nothing I really want to do, so I don't do it. If it happens, it happens, but if not, I'm happy with what I've accomplished."

Kelly was born in Kentucky and began studying martial arts there in 1964 before moving to California.

By the end of the decade, he was teaching at his own karate school before being sought out by Enter the Dragon producer Fred Weintraub, who had heard about his karate skills.

Is it allowed to use belt and suspenders?

#justasking

onuwaje: Lmao.... So u mean u open this thread cos of joblessness or idleness?? Get a life pls

onuwaje, I am not jobless.

Idle? Hmmnn... maybe. I only do Nairaland in my idle time. When I need to refresh . . .

Thanks for asking though.

Hot flushes, night sweats, mood swings - menopause and its side effects can all be blamed on men, experts suggest.

Evolutionary geneticists from Canada's McMaster University say men's tendency to choose younger mates meant fertility became pointless for older women.

In PLOS Computational Biology, they say this eventually led to the menopause.

But a UK expert said that was the "wrong way round" and men chose younger women because older women were less fertile.
'Preferential mating'

Researchers have long been puzzled as to why it appears that human are the only species where females cannot reproduce throughout their lives.

Previous theories had proposed a "grandmother effect". This suggests that women lose their fertility at an age where they might not live to see a child grow, and instead are available to care for younger women's children.

The menopause was therefore seen as the block to older women from continuing to reproduce.

But this latest theory suggests things work the other way around, and that it is the lack of reproduction that has given rise to menopause.

Using computer modelling, the team from McMaster's concluded "preferential mating" was the evolutionary answer - men of all ages choosing younger women as partners.

That meant there was "no purpose" in older women continuing to be fertile.

Prof Rama Singh, an evolutionary geneticist who led the study, said men choosing younger mates were "stacking the odds" against continued fertility.

He told the BBC: "There is evidence in human history; there was always a preference for younger women."

Prof Singh stressed they were looking at human development many thousands of years ago - rather than current social patterns,
'Evolved response'

In the UK, the average age for women to go through the menopause is now 52 even though the average woman goes on to live for another 30 years.

Prof Singh said this extended longevity - plus later childbirth - could potentially alter the timing of the menopause, over a significant period of time.

"The social system is changing. There are women who are starting families later, because of education or a career."

He suggested this trend would mean those women would have a later menopause, and those genes would be passed on to their daughters "with the possibility of menopausal age being delayed".

However Dr Maxwell Burton-Chellew, an evolutionary biologist in the department of zoology at the University of Oxford, challenged the theory.

"The authors argue that the menopause exists in humans because males have a strong preference for younger females.

"However, this is probably the wrong way round - the human male preference for younger females is likely to be because older females are less fertile.

"I think it makes more sense to see the human male preference for younger females largely as an evolved response to the menopause, and to assume that ancestral males would have been wise to mate with any females that could produce offspring."

He added: "Evolutionarily-speaking, older females faced an interesting 'choice': have a child that may not reach adulthood before your own death, or stop reproducing and instead focus on helping your younger relatives reproduce."


Culled from the BBC