₦airaland Forum

Spike Lee hopes his new film, “BlacKkKlansman,” inspires Americans not to vote President Donald Trump into office for a second term.

CNN, Chloe Melas, Adapted

http://www.naijapoint.com.ng/2018/08/08/spike-lee-hopes-his-new-film-sinks-trump/

We are getting there. Bless the day when originality and credibility rules the airwaves of Nigerian movies; TVs and Cinemas. Then can we talk of movies grossing N200 million. Kudos to the pioneers and faithful trysts.

he tallest building in Europe is nearly complete. Rising above a new waterfront complex in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Lakhta Center’s tower stands at 462 meters (1,516 feet) tall, making it the city’s first “supertall” building (one measuring 300 meters or above).
The structure is now the northernmost skyscraper in the world, according to its developers.
The 87-story tower twists a full 90 degrees from its foundation to its top, like a winding needle. This makes it one of the world’s tallest examples of a “twisted” skyscraper design.
Its soaring height is offset by a lower mixed-use building with a 260-meter-long (853-foot-long) facade. Residential and commercial space will be installed up to a height of 360 meters (1,181 feet), above which an observation deck and restaurant will offer breathtaking views over the Gulf of Finland.

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN, Adapted

http://www.naijapoint.com.ng/2018/08/09/see-the-new-european-skyscraper-lakthar-center/

What and epic reply! What a heart of solid gold! God bless this woman farmer! Hope our greedy politicians and pastorpreneurs can learn from this humble peasant.

RIP to the dead. May God preserve our lives for his glory.

Kudos, Author. More grease to your elbow sir. Keep Pushing, Victory at last. Great Nigerian spirit!

A Hellenistic era 2,000-year-old golden earring featuring ornamentation of a horned animal was discovered in Jerusalem, Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said on Wednesday.

The earring was discovered in the City of David National Park encircling the old city walls. The discovery was made during archaeological digs carried out by the IAA and Tel Aviv University located in the center of Israel.

The jewelry was found inside a building that was unearthed during the excavation dating to the early Hellenistic period about which very little was known about Jerusalem. Similar earrings have been found across the Mediterranean basin, especially in Greece, but are extremely rare in Israel.

The earring bears the head of a horned animal, possibly an antelope or deer, with large eyes, a mouth and other facial features. Nearby, excavators also found a gold bead with intricate embroidered ornamentation resembling a thin rope pattern, dividing the beads into two parts with six spirals on each side.

According to the archaeologists, it is unclear whether the earring was worn by a man or a woman, but surely belonged to an upper class person. This can be determined by the proximity to the Temple Mount and the Temple, which was functional at the time, as well as the quality of the ring.

The jewelry was crafted using a technique called filigree in which threads and tiny metal beads are used to create delicate and complex patterns. The earring will be displayed for public at the City of David’s annual archeological conference on Sept. 4.

PM NEWS, ADAPTED

http://www.naijapoint.com.ng/2018/08/08/2000-year-old-go…und-in-jerusalem/

Cops and Road Safety must have gotten their share, and then okayed the abnormality. Sanity, pls visit Nigeria now!

Malawi (CNN) Baby Abigail was born prematurely at seven months in Chatinkha nursery in Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, Lilian Matchaya, her mother is worried: she weighed just 1.8 kilograms (3 pounds) at birth, little more than a bag of flour. She needed an injection of aminophylline, which dilates the lung's cells, to help her breathe, and the day after her birth, nurses found her passed out with blood in her stool.

Babies, especially those born prematurely, are especially vulnerable to infection, as their immune systems haven't developed properly. Doctors suspected that Abigail had sepsis, a serious and potentially fatal condition in which bacteria get into the bloodstream. In response, the body's immune system goes into overdrive, and organs begin to shut down.
Abigail was given two antibiotics, penicillin and gentamicin, a combination meant to kill a wide range of bacteria. The drugs didn't seem to work, and she was soon given ceftriaxone and metronidazole, but there was still no improvement.
Her medical notes state that she then became floppy and passed out once more.
Lab results revealed that she was infected with a drug-resistant form of Klebsiella. The bacteria were resistant to most of the drugs Abigail had been given, meaning the medications were not working to kill her infection.

For four days, she had been given ineffective drugs.
For every hour that a baby in septic shock is given ineffective drugs, the chance of survival decreases by 7.6%, one study found. Dr. Kondwani Kawaza, a neonatologist at the Chatinkha nursery, said that even if the baby doesn't die, sepsis can cause disabling complications such as brain damage, meningitis and impairment to vital organs like the kidneys and the liver.
Doctors at the hospital also face another problem: The antibiotics they needed to treat Abigail's superbug are expensive and not part of Malawi's standard drug regimen, meaning they're not always available in the hospital.
On this occasion, Abigail was lucky: The pharmacy had one of the drugs they needed, amikacin, which can be given for only short periods, as it can trigger deafness as well as kidney and nerve damage.
Abigail was promptly given amikacin, after which her family faced a waiting game.
"The first thing I do when I wake up daily is to pray for my baby to get well. Then I check on her with the hope that she will be OK," said Matchaya, a soft-voiced housewife, through an interpreter. She lives with her husband, a teacher, and three sons in Nancholi, on the outskirts of Blantyre.




Abigail Matchaya weighed just 3 pounds at birth, having been born prematurely, and soon developed sepsis.




Lilian Matchaya holds her daughter, Abigail, praying for her to get better.
According to Kawaza, 20% to 40% of infections his team diagnoses are now resistant to antibiotics. The proportion was a lot lower five years ago, he said.

"Four patients grew Klebsiella in this ward alone in a single week, where in the past, we would say it would be for the whole month," he said. "It's becoming a bigger and bigger problem."
A nation in crisis
Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking 170th out of 188 on the United Nations' human development index. More than 70% of its 18 million people survive on less than $1.90 a day, the international benchmark of poverty.
Most Malawians do not own televisions, cars or phones or have internet. In rural areas, people grow their own food.
And now, the country is facing an epidemic of infections causing sepsis, one of the leading causes of death among newborns. It killed nearly 20% of them in 2016; by comparison, in the UK, sepsis is responsible for less than 2% of infant deaths.
A combination of factors, all related to poverty, mean the percentage of babies dying of sepsis has barely fallen since 2000 despite improvements in the health care system.
CNN, ADAPTED

http://www.naijapoint.com.ng/2018/08/08/babies-dying-fro…istant-superbugs/

A 32-year-old man, Lekan Adediran, has stabbed his 80-year-old father, Lawrence, to death after which he killed himself.

Lekan, who is believed to be suffering from mental illness, killed his father on Monday in Efon Alaaye, headquarters of Efon Local Government Area of Ekiti.

The state police command had confirmed the incident, saying an investigation into the incident had started.

Eyewitnesses said Lekan killed himself with the same broken bottle he used in stabbing his father.

The culprit’s elder brother, Ojo Adediran, who reported the case at the Efron Divisional Police Station, said his brother was mentally unstable, adding that he committed the offence at about 9.45pm.

The Police Public Relations Officer in Ekiti, DSP Caleb Ikechukwu, said the corpses of the two victims had been deposited at the morgue of General Hospital, Efon Alaaye.

“Lekan’s brother approached the police station in Efon Alaaye to report how his brother killed their 80-year-old father with a broken bottle and also killed himself after succeeding in his devilish act.

“Their corpses are presently at Efon General hospital for autopsy. However, the police had been able to maintain peace and orderliness in the town.

“We are not relying on the accounts rendered to the police by the victim’s brother alone.

` We are still going to conduct an investigation to ascertain the veracity of the claim of insanity and the reason behind the killing and the subsequent suicide option taken by Lekan,’’ he said.

PM NEWS, ADAPTED

http://www.naijapoint.com.ng/2018/08/08/madman-kills-father-and-self/

Madness of the highest order! Why not pay a prostitute for this? Better than that.

Jay Austin who, along with his girlfriend, Lauren Geoghegan, gave his two weeks’ notice last year before shipping his bicycle to Africa, succeeded in cycling around the world for almost 400 days.

Asked why they quit their office jobs and set off on a biking journey or around the world, the young American couple offered a simple explanation: They had grown tired of the meetings and teleconferences, of the time sheets and password changes.

“There’s magic out there, in this great big beautiful world,” wrote Jay Austin who, along with his girlfriend, Lauren Geoghegan, gave his two weeks’ notice last year before shipping his bicycle to Africa.

They were often proved right.

On Day 319 of their journey, a Kazakh man stopped his truck, said hello and handed them ice cream bars. In a meadow where they had pitched their tent on Day 342, a family showed up with stringed instruments and treated them to an open-air concert. And on Day 359, two pigtailed girls met them at the top of a pass in Kyrgyzstan with a bouquet of flowers.

There were hardships, too, including punctured tires, snarling dogs, freezing hail and illness. But for Mr. Austin and Ms. Geoghegan, both 29, these were far outweighed by moments of human connection. Then, just over a week ago, came Day 369, when the couple was biking in formation with a group of other tourists on a panoramic stretch of road in southwestern Tajikistan. It was there, on July 29, that a carload of men who are believed to have recorded a video pledging allegiance to the Islamic State spotted them.

A grainy cellphone clip recorded by a driver shows what happened next: The men’s Daewoo sedan passes the cyclists and then makes a sharp U-turn. It doubles back, and aims directly for the bikers, ramming into them and lurching over their fallen forms. In all, four people were killed: Mr. Austin, Ms. Geoghegan and cyclists from Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Two days later, the Islamic State released a video showing five men it identified as the attackers, sitting before the ISIS flag. They face the camera and make a vow: to kill “disbelievers.”

It was a worldview as diametrically opposed as imaginable to the one Mr. Austin and Ms. Geoghegan were trying to live by. Throughout their travels, the couple shared Instagram posts about the openheartedness they wanted to embody and the acts of kindness reciprocated by strangers.

Want to cycle the world, beware ISIS countries!!!

NYT, ADAPTED

http://www.naijapoint.com.ng/2018/08/07/want-to-cycle-ro…e-isis-countries/

My last moments will be spent making peace with my creator, The Almighty God.

A truck driver, yesterday, killed a man and his daugther, leaving his wife injured at Bakin Kura Junction in Bauchi metropolis. The incident, which occurred at around 5.30p.m., attracted many sympathisers as people were wailing and lamenting. An eyewitness, who pleaded anonymity, said the driver of the truck was speeding without considering a motorcycle directly in front of him. The eyewitness said: “The driver of the truck was speeding dangerously when he was approaching the junction. “Instead of him to slow down for the man that was carrying his wife and a child on a motorcycle to pass, he rammed into them and also hit another man riding a motorcycle, who was lucky as he only sustained injuries. “The  man died on the spot along with his female child, while his wife was seriously injured. The scene of the crash was horrible, because the man’s skull was shattered.” Contacted, Sector Head of Operations, Federal Road Safety Corp, FRSC, Mr. Paul Gua, said the accident involved a truck with number plates 810503 ADJ and two motorcycles.

By Suzan Edeh, Vanguardngr, Adapted

http://www.naijapoint.com.ng/2018/08/07/truck-driver-kil…s-wife-in-bauchi/ ‎

The police in Indonesia confirmed the arrest of an 83-year-old village witch doctor who entrapped a 12-year-old girl and tricked her into having sex with him for the past 15 years by claiming to be possessed by the “jin”, or spirit, of a young boy.The police said the woman, an identified as “H”, was rescued on Sunday in Tolitoli regency, in Central Sulawesi province.

Acting on a tip-off, police said they had found the woman, who was now aged 28, in a rocky crevice in a jungle near Bajugan village, where she had been held during the day since her disappearance in 2003. At night, police said she stayed in a hut near the house of the 83-year old man, identified by police as JG.

Central Sulawesi Police Chief Muhammad Iqbal Alqudusy said the man had shown the girl a picture of a boy named Amrin “who she thought was her boyfriend”.“She was led to believe that Amrin’s spirit had entered (the elderly man’s) body,” Iqbal said on Tuesday at a news conference that was posted online.


Indonesian Sex Pervert
“It is obvious that he was satisfying his lust.”

Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country but old beliefs about spirits and other paranormal activity are still held by some.Iqbal later told Reuters the woman said she had been having intercourse with “Jin Amrin” since 2003 “but she was really having sex with JG”.

The man, he said, admitted to sexual relations since 2008. Police said they found the woman after her sister alerted neighbours she was nearby.

According to the Jakarta Post, the sister was married to the son of the shaman, known for his traditional healing methods and abilities to channel spirits. The man explained the victim’s disappearance to her parents by saying she had gone to Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, to work, the newspaper reported. The man has been charged with offences under Indonesia’s child protection laws, which carry a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.


PM NEWS, Adapted

http://www.naijapoint.com.ng/2018/08/07/83-year-old-arre…ave-for-15-years/ ‎

RIP to the dead. How I hope the economy can improve for more hope for the poor man!

A lecturer at Anna University, Chennai, India boosted scores of a student in one paper from 5 to 77 after  re-evaluation that seemed perfectly legal but exploited loopholes in rules.The answer sheet from the April/ May 2017 exam is part of evidence collected by directorate of vigilance and anti-corruption. directorate of vigilance and anti-corruption (DVAC), which has booked former controller of examinations G V Uma and nine others for taking money to rig answer sheets. Tens of thousands of students may have paid to pass, paid to pass, the investigators suspect. The university re-evaluation rules state that if the re-evaluation marks are 15 marks more than the original,  second re-evaluation is to be done. The marks obtained in the central evaluation, first re-evaluation and second re-evaluation are compared, and the ‘best’ among the two ‘most consistent marks’ is taken as the ‘true’ score. In this case, the student’s marks changed from 5 to 45 after the first re-evaluation, a change of 40 marks from the original. Since the difference in marks was more than 15, the paper was sent for a second re-evaluation as per rules. After the second re-evaluation, the student was given 77 marks. The case is being investigated.

Indiatimes,Siddharth Prabhakar, Adapted

http://www.naijapoint.com.ng/2018/08/07/cash-for-marks-l…ent-from-5-to-77/ ‎

Unprecedented! OAU needs to re-invent these courses to gain back these NUC accreditations.
Great Ife! Rise above this, and shine.

Secession not the way... if no tribe foisters jihadist supremacy views and actions on others.

What is possible in one clime might be unthinkable in another.

Do you know that people are allowed to sleep overnight in HongKong's Macdonalds?

Can anybody try that in Lagos or any other city in Nigeria? Of course not!

The peculiar situations that warrant people sleeping in HongKong eateries are outlined by CNN'S Jessie Young:

In just five years there's been a sixfold increase in so-called McRefugees in Hong Kong -- residents who spend their nights sleeping in 24-hour McDonald's outlets across the city, a survey has found.

The study, conducted by the non-profit Junior Chamber International (JCI) Tai Ping Shan, counted 334 people sleeping in McDonald's restaurants during June and July, a significant increase since a similar study in 2013, which found only 57 sleepers.
"The purpose of this research was originally to provide services (for the sleepers), but we found that there is no specific picture of the McRefugee situation in Hong Kong," Jennifer Hung, chairwoman of the study, told CNN. "They (government officials) acknowledged that there are no statistics, so we conducted this research."



Researchers who visited 110 of Hong Kong's 24-hour McDonald's outlets found not all of the overnight sleepers were homeless.
More than 70% of respondents said they had other places to sleep, such as public housing flats or subdivided units, and the majority had either full-time or part-time jobs, challenging the common perception that these sleepers are homeless or unemployed.
"They have places to sleep, but they don't go back home," said Hung.
One main reason is that many sleepers face socioeconomic challenges such as high rents or electricity bills. Hung recalled one man who couldn't afford air conditioning, and who didn't have any windows for air flow in his subdivided apartment. Rather than pay his landlord $2 per unit of air conditioning, the man chose to enjoy the air conditioned McDonald's on sweltering summer nights.
The free wifi, cheap food, and bathroom facilities don't hurt, Hung added.
Hong Kong has one of the world's most unaffordable housing markets, according to a 2017 study by Demographia. Housing prices have risen from an average of $770 per square foot in 1997, to more than $1,700 today.



People sleep at a McDonald's in 2015.
Others factors include family or personal conflicts. One young construction worker disliked being at home due to a difficult relationship with his parents. Another 55-year-old woman slept at McDonald's to avoid going home to her abusive husband.
Some avoid their homes even when there is no conflict -- one elderly woman with no children found her home unbearably lonely after her husband passed away, and so spends her nights at McDonald's among fellow sleepers.
"We found that people are not only poor in pocket or poor in wealth, but poor in their souls, their lives," Hung said.

JCI has recommended several measures to the Hong Kong government, including providing more resources for personal welfare organizations and social workers, and updating statistics of sleepers to track future trends.
More importantly, a change in social attitudes is needed, Hung said. The government can only do so much; after all, many of these people have homes and jobs.
"Nowadays, we won't talk with strangers, we won't care about people next to us," Hung said. "We would like to encourage our citizens to care about people around them."
Jessie Young, CNN, Adapted By:
Naijapoint.com.ng @
http://www.naijapoint.com.ng/2018/08/06/sleeping-overnig…biggs-impossible/

What is "I am hungry?" in Ibo. Someone..pls!

Police in the US city of Chicago have asked for more help to combat gun violence after more than 60 people were shot over the weekend.

At least 10 people were killed in the city and police say most of the shootings were gang related. "We will not be defeated," police chief Fred Waller told reporters on Sunday.

"We need more help from our judicial system. We need more help from our federal partners, and we are getting it," he added. Most of the shootings happened on Sunday with 30 people shot between midnight and 03:00.

The majority of the incidents reportedly occurred in Chicago's south and west sides.

"It's one of our most violent weekends, there's no question about that," a police spokesman told a news conference on Sunday.

Donovan Price, a pastor and emergency administrator, told CBS News that the city was like a "war zone".

"This is just out of control right now," he said. "It's a war zone going on right now. Chicago is just crazy."

Media caption Life and death on the lost streets of Chicago
"This is the worst I've ever seen it," one police officer who was stationed outside a hospital told the Chicago Sun Times newspaper. "It's hot right now. There's a lot of tension... and it might get worse."

But officials say the spike in violence is at odds with the general trend in the city, where shootings are said to be decreasing.

Earlier this month, the Chicago Tribune reported that there had been 532 fewer shootings this year compared to 2017.

Police chief Waller told reporters that shootings had decreased by 30% from 2017, and murders by 25%.


He said that much of the weekend's violence was a result of gang members shooting at large crowds indiscriminately.

"An offender or some type of rival gang sees a large group of people... and they shoot into a crowd, no matter who they hit," he said.

"We won't be overrun by that small group, that small element that is committing these reckless acts."

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to intervene in Chicago, and last year he said that crime and killings had reached "epidemic proportions"in the city.

Last June, officials announced the creation of the Chicago Gun Strike Force which comprises city police officers, state troopers, federal agents and intelligence research specialists.

It was created to help curb the flow of illegal guns and to target repeat gun offenders, who authorities say are responsible for the city's violence problem.

BBC, ADAPTED by

http://www.naijapoint.com.ng/2018/08/06/chicago-shooting…d-still-counting/

VELLORE: The Vellore police on Wednesday arrested a 45-year  old woman, Jayanthi,  for biting off a chunk of her husband's penis when he found a man on top of her in Thuraimoolai village, near Gudiyatham, Vellore district. She has been charged with attempted murder. Senthamarai, the husband caught Dhatchanamoothi,the lover, on top of his wife, in a secluded corner, private from the public festival area where all revelers were massed for a festival. Jayanthi bit off the man's penis to enable her overpowered lover and herself to escape the envisioned rage of the festive mob.
Senthamarai is said to be in stable conditions at the Rajiv Ghandi Medical College and Hospital at Chennai. Jayanthi is in police detention after her first appearance in court.

Karal Marx, Times of India, Adapted by

http://www.naijapoint.com.ng/2018/08/06/woman-cuts-husba…er-on-top-of-her/ ‎

How dumb can you be? Crime doesn't pay! Work hard.

(CNN) The Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 33 people, the World Health Organization said Sunday.

An additional 43 suspected cases of Ebola were reported, including 13 confirmed by lab testing, according to WHO.

How an Ebola outbreak can start, and end 
The outbreak is spreading through five health zones in North Kivu province and one health zone in Ituri province, which poses geographic and political challenges, the WHO said. North Kivu borders Rwanda and Uganda and trade activity fuels heavy movement across the borders.
North Kivu also hosts over 1 million displaced people and fighting between government forces and armed militant groups makes containing the highly infectious virus a challenge.
"We're responding to an outbreak of this high-threat pathogen, with one of the highest mortality rates of any known disease, but in the context of a war zone," Peter Salama, Head of Emergencies at WHO said.


Ebola outbreak in Congo declared over, but the risk can remain
Health officials announced the outbreak Wednesday, about a week after the government of Congo declared another Ebola outbreak in Equateur province had been contained. That outbreak was about 2,500 km (1,553 miles) from the current outbreak.
There are 33 additional "suspected cases" in the North Kivu outbreak that are pending lab test results to "confirm or exclude Ebola virus disease," according to WHO.
Three healthcare workers have been affected, including two who died, the WHO said.
"The Ministry of Health, WHO, and partners are working to establish the full extent of this outbreak", the WHO statement read.

CNN, Kelly McCleary, Sebastian Shukla, Jacqueline Howard, ADAPTED

Read more at http://www.naijapoint.com.ng/2018/08/05/ebola-outbreak-in-congo-33-dead/ ‎

Inside the world’s top artificial intelligence labs, researchers are getting closer to creating robotic hands that can mimic the real thing. A robotic hand? Four autonomous fingers and a thumb that can do anything your own flesh and blood can do? That is still the stuff of fantasy.

Inside OpenAI, the San Francisco artificial intelligence lab founded by Elon Musk and several other big Silicon Valley names, you will find a robotic hand called Dactyl. It looks a lot like Luke Skywalker’s mechanical prosthetic in the latest Star Wars film: mechanical digits that bend and straighten like a human hand. If you give Dactyl an alphabet block and ask it to show you particular letters — let’s say the red O, the orange P and the blue I — it will show them to you and spin, twist and flip the toy in nimble ways. The future looks bright for amputees.

MAE RYAN, CADE METS and RUMSEY TAYLOR, NYT, ADAPTED

Read more at http://www.naijapoint.com.ng/2018/08/05/robotic-hands-th…and-for-amputees/ ‎

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Can anyone use it at any age? Age limit?

More than 118 goats broke loose and invaded a neighborhood in Boise, Idaho, USA. The goats were all over the neighbouhood; on streets, gardens and accessible homes. The goats got loose from a farm in the neighbouhood. Many residents didn’t want them to leave. The questions will be; how do you convince the local street cleaning agency that the additional goat droppings are normal, and for how long, and for who’s benefit? Individual or state?l
CNN. Adapted

Quaint and original piece. May visit Ado Awaye somedays. How do you get there sir?