text:
MusicUpdate: DeeJay Bash_Club Mix Vol1

Deejay Bash, The Turntable Monster, is back with this new mix after the success of his first mix DeeJay Bash _ Bash Mix Vol2 . This new mix is a mad mix of hot tunes.

Exclusively Mixed and mastered by Deejay_Bash
Featuring Stars;
Mavin Crew
YBNL Crew and many more..

I bet you will like this!!!

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

MusicUpdate: Nanya_If I Were A Boy (Cover)

Nanya is a Nigerian pop/alternative artist whose gift is her voice and whose passion is music.

Her interest in pursuing music as a career crystallized when she moved to Lagos in 2011 and studied Music Theory, Piano and Vocals at the Muson Basic School.
Since then she’s worked on various movie soundtracks and radio voice-overs.

Off her Uncovered Project, Nanya presents her cover for: If I Were A Boy by Beyonce

“I decided to do this first because I love the vocal delivery on the original and wanted to do my take on it. Also, I love how it’s a message to all the guys out there. You all better listen up!” -Nanya

The Uncovered Project is a series of covers by Nanya to introduce audiences to her talents and unique vocal delivery.
The series will cover hit songs from various international female artists in pidgin English

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

MusicUpdate: Loose Kanyon_Hallelujah

Loopy Music is excited to present HALLELUYAH, the first single of rapper Loose Kaynon’s Gemini Project.
Crafted by producer extraordinaire Kidkonnect, the song showcases several layers of musical mastery: as a feel-good jam to get down to and as a display of Loose Kaynon’s lyrical and storytelling ability.

The GEMINI PROJECT will be released July 2014.
The project features MI Abaga, ShowDemCamp, Kidkonnect, Zaina, Coker, Victoria Kimani, and Sir Daudap.

Enjoy this tune. Personally, this track’s going to be on replay on my playlist for weeks.

Posted @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

MusicUpdate: Slyxxy_There Is God O_ft_Patience Jonathan (Prod by IJ Beats)

Listen as Slyxxy of Sly Entertainment Delivers an Emotional Verse on the Speech Made by Mrs Patience Jonathan;The First Lady of the federal republic of Nigeria. The Speech Popularly Known as “There is God o” has received a lot of reviews, both Positively and otherwise.
Not being left out, he points out to the crime and killings presently going on in the Country. Produced by IJ Beats, this is indeed a masterpiece. Download and Share your Thoughts.

Follow Slyxxy and IJ Beats on twitter @sly_xxy and @ijbeats

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

MusicUpdate: Samklef_Walking Talking (Refix) + Intoxicated ft TerryG

Multiple award winning recording artiste, Hit Producer and KlefSound lead man is making a splash.

Samklef brings double delight with his new singles aptly titled ‘Waking Taking (Refix)’ and ‘Intoxicated’.

He is bound to break the jinx with this stellar club ready anthems, the later features the high energy Terry G and Samklef matches up with a befitting instrumentation and melody while ‘Walking Taking (Refix)’ is a highlife-tinged number with impeccable string work.

This is a tip of the iceberg from one of Nigeria’s most successful producer and artiste.

Posted by @SMD_Nation for @iam_SMD_

Event: Most Beautiful Girl from the University of first choice, Who Is She?

Who Is She?
Who Is She?
She is the Most Beautiful Girl from the first choice in Nigeria.

She Is beautiful.
She Is pretty.
She Is African and Proud.
She Is smart.
She Is intelligent.
She Is lovable.
She Will Be Loved by all.
She Is humane.
She loves the masses.

Then the big question is ‘Who Is She?’

Watch this space as we in conjunction with Sulcata Entertainment answer these questions.
Follow @sulcataent , @SMD_Nation and @iam_SMD_ for more details and updates. Also like these facebook pages Sulcata Entertainment and @SMD_Nation.

Together let’s know, ‘Who She Is’… #Anticipate, Join the movement.

Posted @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

MusicUpdate: Rabbi_ Arise (Prod by Donsam)

Brand new single “ARISE” by #RABBI is a conscious(reggae) song that tends to address the current happenings in nigeria and what Nigerians should do.
It’s time for Nigerians to “ARISE” and fight for TRUTH and JUSTICE, PROGRESS and PEACE, EQUITY and SECURITY. Enough is enough for corruption and bad rulers. It’s time to stand for freedom!   Download, enjoy and spread the word.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

MusicUpdate: WaleyP_Superstar

WaleyP , real name Faloode Babawale, is a young, fast rising act. Based in the ancient town of Ibadan but shuttles Lagos, WaleyP is a versatile singer, he does almost everything. He raps and he sings, his genre of music spans to Hip hop, Reggae, Afro Hip hop. He likes creating choruses to songs and has helped some artistes with choruses.
Superstar is his first official release. Its a cool jam with a slow tempo of Hip Hop. He conjours this one from deep within him and you all will love this. From the stables of blog-label @SMD_Nation, WaleyP serves you with this sweet tune. Enjoy.

Posted @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

MusicUpdate: Lloyd 7_Jele

Benue’s hidden talent Lloyd 7 is finally set to amaze his fans all around with his very hot new club hit single JELE. This is one massive tune, I personally enjoy this one and thumbs up to Lloyd 7. This song’s been on repeat on my playlist since I got it.
Download, Dance and enjoy.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

MusicUpdate: JT Warrior_Happy Birthday_ft_Frogs and Big Timz

Happy Birthday song By Makurdi’s finest, JTwarrior.
Dropped the song for all who has and wish to celebrate their birthdays.. Specially dedicated to SMD_Nation ..Follow JT on twitter @JT_Warrior Facebook: Realjay Tee BBM: 2868EE50. Watch out as Videos to two of his dope songs #Anita and #Tiv freestyle drops soon.
Happy Birthday is produced by BigTimz!
Download and enjoy. Thank me later.

Posted by @iam_smd_ for @SMD_Nation

MusicUpdate: MayD_Tanx A Lot

This is a new joint by May D and it is titled Tanx A Lot.

A very decent mid tempo song which reminds me of Soundtrack, May D’s first official single. I love this.

Check it out.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

MusicUpdate: Hakym_Salamalekun Remix_ft_Patoranking_Reminisce

Hakym and his label De Ark have decided to drop a remix to his hit single “Salamualekun” featuring Reminisce and fast rising  act Patoranking. The video to Salamualekun dropped some months ago and the reception was good .

Is the remix to the hit single worth it??? Share your thoughts!

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

Video: Solidstar_Super Eagles

Achievas and SolidStar inked a deal with NFF for the Theme song to usher the Super Eagles into the world cup 2014 in Brazil.This video features cameo from the Nigerian Supporters Club, Iyanya, Yung6ix, Emma Nyra, Selebobo, Tekno, Charass, NonnyD, and Waconzy.

Watch the video and share your thoughts

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

Video: Jesse Jagz_The Search_ft_Jumar and Dugod

CEO Jesse Jagz Nation, Jesse Jagz releases the first video for “The Search” off his recent release The Royal Niger Company.
‘The Royal Niger Company’ comes after his widely accepted ‘Thy Nation Come’ album.
Jesse featured Jumar and Dugod on the track. Decent video.
We at SMD_Nation are fans of Jesse Jagz and this is one good effort from him… Check it out and enjoy

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

CampusCorner: Caleb University shut after riot

The authorities of the Caleb University, in Imota, Lagos State, shut the institution on Thursday following a violent protest by the students.
Though no lives were lost, the students damaged properties worth millions of naira during their protest on Wednesday evening.
It was gathered that the students who were protesting against what they tagged “strict rules”, smashed the glasses of 4 cars and damaged several properties belonging to the school.
Our sources said an altercation between a Muslim student and an hostel porter of the university caused the unrest.
The porter, it was learnt, stopped the Muslim student from praying in the school. The action reportedly provoked other students who frowned on the decision of the official.
Following this, the students mobilised and started shouting solidarity songs and making calls for freedom of worship.
The rally later degenerated as they attacked the university official and started destroying properties on campus.
It was also learnt that the intervention of the police prevented the rampaging students from causing more havoc.
But announcing the forced closure on Thursday, the school’s Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Ayo Olukoju, admitted that the action of the students prompted the “temporal vacation”.
Olukoju, who said the school would reopen on June 2, 2014, noted that the religious link to crisis was a “mere pretence.”
The insistence of the authorities to enforce a standing rule in the school, the VC, who spoke to our correspondent on Thursday, said caused the demonstration.
He said, “We have rules and regulations in the school and all the students agreed to abide by them. These rules are in the student handout. Before now, we have been applying appropriate sanctions against students who default in any of these rules. We wanted to enforce one of such sanctions on Wednesday before this crisis escalated.
“Please, the crisis has nothing to do with religion. It has nothing to do with being a Christian or a Muslim. People, especially female students even went to their worship centres on campus on Wednesday to pray after the incident. Again, I tell you this action was carried out by the male students alone.”
Authorities of the Bowen University, Iwo, Osun State, another private university, shut the institution last March following a violent students’ protest.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

Sports: ‘Mourinho is a fool for calling me old’ – Eto’o

Samuel Eto’o has labelled Jose Mourinho a “fool” after the Chelsea boss questioned the veracity of his official age earlier in the season.
Mourinho was unwittingly caught on camera lamenting the quality of the strikers at his disposal at a sponsors’ event in Switzerland in February, and suggested that Eto’o could be older than he claims to be.
The now-33-year-old appeared to react in jest by celebrating his next Chelsea goal by holding his back in false pain, aping the manner of a geriatric.
However, Eto’o – who is now out of contract at Stamford Bridge – has blasted Mourinho for his comments, while also insisting that he can continue playing at the highest level for the foreseeable future.
“Today, I am 33 years old – and it is not because a fool called me an old man that you must believe it,” the Cameroonian told
“And you may have noticed that the old man was better than the youngsters. Some believe I am going to retire in the United States or in the Middle East, but I have regained the joy of the Champions League and I am going to carry on playing in the Champions League.
“Where? I am not going to tell you.”
Eto’o is set to feature at his fourth World Cup for Cameroon next month, and the four-time African Player of the Year feels he could go on and break Lothar Matthaus’ and Antonio Carbajal’s record of playing at five World Cups.
“I am going to carry on playing because physically and mentally I feel great,” he added.
“So I am going to go to this World Cup and to the next one when I will be 37. Some did it at 42, so I can still play at two more World Cups.”

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

MusicUpdate: Flavour_Power To Win_ft_MI_Irene Logan_Kwabena Kwabena

“Power to Win”, rendered powerfully by MI and Flavour with additionally vocals from Irene Logan & Kwabena Kwabena is one of the special songs for the Super Eagles by Glo.
The towering anthem is a perfect fit for the purpose behind it and was recorded in South Africa.

Also be on the look-out for “Remember Me” by Psquare and a medley of popular football songs by various Globacom ambassadors including Burna Boy, MI, Omawunmi, Waje, Sammy Oposo, Bez and Sani Denja.
Download and enjoy.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

MusicUpdate: Iceprince_Tears For Naija (#BringBackOurGirls)

This is more than a song. It is an outcry. BET Award winner Iceprince Zamani takes his #BringBackOurGirls campaign to another level as he drops this track he titles ‘Tears For Naija’. Following the recent abduction of over 200 girls in Nigera, Chocolate City signee decides to drop a track following the footsteps of fellow label mate Victoria Kimani who dropped her own song Emotions for the same purpose. Here’s Ice with ‘Tears For Naija’ . Download and enjoy

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

CampusCorner: Nassarawa State Polytecnic chapter of NASUP suspends its 7months old strike

The Nasarawa State Polytechnic chapter of Non Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (NASUP), on Wednesday suspended its seven months-old-strike.The Chairman of the union, Mr David Ayitono-Goshi announced the suspension in Lafia while briefing journalists on the outcome of the meeting they had with the management of the polytechnic.
Ayitono-Goshi said that the suspension followed the intervention of respected personalities who pledged to pursue the union’s grievances to the appropriate authorities.
“We have been on strike for seven months now, but when the new members of the governing council came on board, they requested that we should appeal to the nationalheadquarters of the union to suspend the strike.“They also assured that they will continue with the negotiation from where it stopped,” he said.
The chairman said that the suspension was “conditional”, as the union would resume its strike if the state government fails to address the issues within six month.He directed all members of the union to resume work immediately.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that already some members of the members have complied with the directive, as they were seen in their places of work. (NAN)

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

News: Interpol arrests Nyanya blast mastermind in Sudan

The terror fugitive behind the Nyanya bombing, Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche who was declared wanted by the Nigerian Police Force has been arrested.
This was announced today in Abuja at the National Briefing Centre, located at headquarters of National Orientation Agency (NOA). The coordinator of the national briefing centre, Director General of NOA, Mr. Mike Omeri, said Ogwuche was arrested in Sudan.
He said:
Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche who was earlier declared wanted has been arrested in Sudan with the effortsof the Army, DSS, the National Bureau of the Interpol based at the Nigerian
Police Force Headquarters and security operatives of Sudan”.
Omeri further stated that the security operatives are already working to ensure his extradition back to Nigeria from where he was arrested.
The arrest came after the National Bureau of the Interpol based at the Nigerian Police Force Headquarters issued an international red alert for the search and arrest of terror fugitive.
Reports say Ogwuche, a U.K.-born son of a retired colonel, was once arrested on terrorism-related charges but was released upon pressure from his father and the human rights community. It was when his father was asked to produce his son and he couldn’t that it was learnt that the wanted man had escaped to Sudan.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

News: ‘Nothing wrong negotiating with Boko Haram’ – Northern leaders

Contrary to the position of many Nigerians, two northern groups have said that there is nothing wrong with the plan by the government to negotiate with Boko Haram in order to secure the freedom of the girls seized by the terrorists from their school in Chibok, Borno State, over a month ago.
Boko Haram released a video showing the missing Nigerian schoolgirls, alleging they had converted to Islam and would not be released until all their members in prison were freed.
Chairman of the Northern Elders Council, NEC, Alhaji Tanko Yakassi, and the National Coordinator of Northern Politicians, Academics, Professionals and Businessmen, NPAPB, Dr. Junaid Mohammed, in separate interviews with Vanguard yesterday, threw their weight behind the plan by the Federal Government to dialogue with the sect in a bid to free the girls.
Meanwhile, President Goodluck Jonathan has rejected the idea of a swap of Boko Haram prisoners for the schoolgirls, Britain’s Minister for Africa said after talks with him in Abuja, yesterday.
“He made it very clear that there would be no negotiations with Boko Haram that involved a swap of abducted schoolgirls for prisoners,” Mark Simmonds told a news conference.
The northern leaders, who are delegates to the ongoing National Conference, said the Federal Government had no option than to negotiate in good faith with the sect to return the children to their parents and end their agony.
“As far as we are concerned, discussion with the group is a step in the right direction. There is no substitute to dialogue. What we want in this country is peace.”
The leader of NPAPB, Mohammed, said that despite the provocation by Boko Haram, the Federal Government should seize the offer made by the sect and dialogue in utmost good faith to free the children.
According to Mohammed, the attention of the Federal Government and men of goodwill should be focused on securing the release of the children unharmed and returning them to their parents.
The Second Republic politician, who described Boko Haram as a repugnant group that does not represent the interest of anyone, asked the government to learn lessons from what the sect had done in recent years and bring it to an end.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

CelebGist: Davido, Tiwa Savage nominated for BET Award, see full list of nominations

Davido and Tiwa Savage have been nominated at the BET Awards 2014. Beyonce, Jay Z and Drake lead the list with five nominations each..
The BET Awards 2014 will hold on June 29 at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles.
Wizkid & Sarkodie won in 2012 and Ice Prince in 2013.

Best International Act: Africa
Davido (Nigeria)
Diamond Platnumz (Tanzania)
Mafikizolo (South Africa)
Sarkodie (Ghana)
Tiwa Savage (Nigeria) Toofan (Togo)

(Full List Below)
Best Female R&B/Pop Artist
Janelle Monáe
Jhené Aiko
K. Michelle
Tamar Braxton
Best Male R&B/Pop Artist
August Alsina
Chris Brown
John Legend
Justin Timberlake
Pharrell Williams
Best Group
A$AP Mob
Daft Punk
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
Young Money
Best Collaboration
August Alsina f/ Trinidad Jame$ – “I Luv This”
Beyoncé f/ JAY Z – “Drunk In Love “
Drake f/ Majid Jordan – “Hold On (We’re Going Home)”
JAY Z f/ Justin Timberlake – “Holy Grail”
Robin Thicke f/ T.I. & Pharrell Williams – “Blurred Lines”
YG f/ Jeezy & Rich Homie Quan – “My Hitta”
Best Male Hip Hop Artist
J. Cole
Kendrick Lamar
Best Female Hip Hop Artist
Angel Haze
Charli Baltimore
Iggy Azalea
Nicki Minaj
Video of the Year
Beyoncé – “Partition”
Beyoncé f/ JAY Z – “Drunk In Love”
Chris Brown – “Fine China”
Drake –  “Worst Behavior”
Pharrell Williams –  “Happy”
Video Director of the Year
Benny Boom
Chris Brown
Colin Tilley
Director X
Hype Williams
Best New Artist
Ariana Grande
August Alsina
Mack Wilds
Rich Homie Quan
ScHoolboy Q
Best Gospel Artist
Donnie McClurkin
Erica Campbell
Hezekiah Walker
Tamela Mann
Tye Tribbett
Best Actress
Angela Bassett
Gabrielle Union
Kerry Washington
Lupita Nyong’o
Oprah Winfrey
Best Actor
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Forest Whitaker
Idris Elba
Kevin Hart
Michael B. Jordan
YoungStars Award
Gabrielle Douglas
Jacob Latimore
Jaden Smith
KeKe Palmer
Best Movie
12 Years a Slave
The Best Man Holiday
Fruitvale Station
Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain
Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Subway Sportswoman of the Year
Brittney Griner
Lolo Jones
Serena Williams
Skylar Diggins
Venus Williams
Subway Sportsman of the Year
Blake Griffin
Carmelo Anthony
Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Kevin Durant
LeBron James
Centric Award
Aloe Blacc – “The Man”
Jennifer Hudson f/ T.I. – “I Can’t Describe (The Way I Feel)”
Jhené Aiko – “The Worst”
LiV Warfield – “Why Do You Lie?”
Wale f/ Sam Dew – “LoveHate Thing”
Best International Act: UK
Dizzee Rascal
Krept & Konan
Laura Mvula
Rita Ora
Tinie Tempah

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

CampusCorner: Images from Caleb University riot

We reported to you yesterday that riot broke out in Caleb University yesterday. Though the cause of the riot still remains uncertain, our source claimed it was caused when a porter refused a moslem student the right to say his prayers in the hostel.
The riot proved destructive going by images we just got. According to Caleb University’s official website, the school is a Christian university meaning the authorities might frown at other religions’ activities. See pictures below

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

CampusCorner: Riots begin in Caleb University after porter disrupts muslim student’s prayer session

Reports reaching us right now says riots have erupted at Caleb University. Students are said to have destroyed some school properties.
Our source says the riot was caused by an incident in the boys’ hostel. It was reported that a student who is a moslem was in his hostel room saying his moslem prayers with his mat. Then an hostel porter was said to have seen him, and he allegedly pulled off the mat from underneath the student to disrupt his prayers. Then fellow students got angry and they started rioting.
Window pans and some other things have been destroyed by the rioting students.
It should be noted that ‘praying in the moslem way’ is prohibited in the school as it is a Christian school, Deeper Life precisely.
Details and pictures to follow soon.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

Sports: Ashley Cole retires from international football after World Cup snub

Ashley Cole has retired from international football after being told he would not be in England’s World Cup squad.
Chelsea left-back Cole, 33, has struggled for playing time with his club this season, with Spaniard Cesar Azpilicueta having been preferred by Jose Mourinho.
Although he has been involved more towards the end of the campaign, Cole has been supplanted by Everton’s Leighton Baines and, most likely, Southampton teenager Luke Shaw.
The decision brings an end to a lengthy international career for Cole, who made his England debut against Albania in 2001 and has won 107 caps since.
Cole, who is out of contract this summer as well, wrote on his Twitter feed: “I got the call from Roy and agree England team should be about the young players. I think it best I retire from England team now.
“We have a great manager and team and I wish them only success. I will be supporting them like a true fan. Thanks to everyone for everything.
“Baines and Shaw are great players, proved this season, and are the future of this country, it was a pleasure to get 107 caps.”
Roy Hodgson responded to Cole’s announcement by telling the FA’s website: “Among many difficult decisions I have had to make for my squad, not selecting Ashley was one of the hardest.
“To amass more than a century of caps was a staggering achievement and he deserves enormous credit for the desire and brilliance that has shone through over the years he has represented his country.
“Of course I must respect his decision to retire. He has been one of England’s finest players but I want to look to the future. It has been one of the hardest decisions of my career.”
Hodgson continued: “The most important factor was speaking to Ashley prior to the announcement on Monday, he deserved to hear it directly from me and he took the news with huge grace.
“In two years working with him he has shown nothing but relentless professionalism, and a great hunger to play for England. He is someone I have the utmost respect for and I wished him all the best, he in turn wished the team well this summer.”

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

CelebGist: Miley Cyrus performs with large blow up of d*ck on stage

She’s going gaga. This is absolutely crazy. 21 year Miley Cyrus keeps acting like she only just discovered s*x. The singer enraged parents of her young fans after she performed provocatively alongside a giant blow-up man-hood at her gig at London hotspot G-A-Y on Friday night. A lot of teenagers attend Miley Cyrus shows…and some parents feel this is not what they want to expose their children to. See more pics below

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

Video: Oyinbo Remake_There Is God O

LMAO… Men this is serious. Just after the First Lady of Nigeria’s ‘There Is God o’ outburst on National TV, couple of Nigerians have released remake of it, Omo Baba did one and recently, the SUG registrar of Yabatech did his own version of There Is God O .
This time it has gone international. There is an oyinbo remake already.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

Video: Tim Westwood Freestyle Crib session with Phenom

Knighthouse rapper Phenom was at Tim Westwood’s studio recently where he dropped a punchline or two.

Watch the crib session of the Knighthouse general

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

CelebGist: Asha unveils album artwork and release date

Nigerian-French musician, Asa has announced a new album which is expected to be released on September 17.

Asa, real name Bukola Elemide hasn’t released any music project after her Beautiful Imperfection album, but has finally heard the cry of her loyal fans by announcing an album titled, Bed of Stone.

The album will be released on Wednesday, 17/09/2014 at 20:00

I am one big fan of hers, and this is good news to every one of her fans out there too.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

News: Pope Francis joins #BringBackOurGirls campaign

Pope Francis joined the #BringBackOurGirls campaign when he tweeted the tweet below.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

News: Nigeria enters list of unsafe countries for babies to live. See full list

Nigeria has gained itself more negative publicity in the media again.
Out of 178 countries in the world, Nigeria is 171 – making it one of the most dangerous countries in the world to bring a child into.
This new report was by Save the Children‘s 15th annual State of the World’s Mothers Report.
Finland is the safest place, followed by Norway, Sweden and Iceland.
10 African countries round up the list of 178 countries, making them the worst countries.
Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo account for a staggering 20 percent of child deaths.
At 178, Somalia is the most dangerous country for pregnant women and young children in the world. This is due to natural disaster as well as persistent conflict.
The report also states that six percent of women in the African country are likely to die of a maternal cause, and a staggering 15 percent of children will perish before they turn five.
Health, education and the economy in all 178 nations help determine which are the safest and happiest for mothers and children to live in.

See lists
The Top 10
1. Finland
2. Norway
3. Sweden
4. Iceland
5. Netherlands
6. Denmark
7. Spain
8. Germany
9. Australia*
9. Belgium * (tied)
Bottom 10
169. Cote d’Ivoire
170. Chad
171. Nigeria
172. Sierra Leone
173. Central African Republic
174. Guinea-Bissau
175. Mali*
175. Niger* (tied)
177. Democratic Republic of Congo
178. Somalia

Posted @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

News: Police gives reasons for its in-efficiency

The Tin-Can Island and RORO Ports Police Command, Lagos, said on Friday that lack of operational patrol vehicles, manpower and communication gadgets had affected its operations at the port.
Mr Olusegun Ajamolaya, Divisional Police Officer, made the disclosure when the Commissioner of Police, Western Port, Mr Kayode Aderanti, visited the command.
Ajamolaya said that the command had no patrol vehicle in the last five years except the one it received from MRS Oil and Gas Ltd.
He said the Nigerian Ports Authority had requested from stakeholders as part of their corporate social responsibility for vehicles for the command only MRS Oil and Gas responded to the call.
He added that the command needed more officers due to the dearth of manpower at the command.
“The recent demobilisation of personnel of the command has affected its manpower to cover vulnerable spots.
“The total strength of RORO division is now 65 and five are sent to the command headquarters every week on special duties.
“Twelve out of the 65 cannot bear arms or deployed on night duties for reasons of their gender,’’ the divisional police officer said.
He said that the same problem was applicable to the Tin Can Island division as 10 out of the 54 manpower could not bear arms.
He appealed to the commissioner to look into the distribution of personnel in the command to address the shortfall.
Ajamolaya said the command lacked communication gadgets, poor power and poor water supply and kits.
He said that in spite of the challenges the officers and men would continue perform their duties.
He urged the commissioner to raise the challenges again during an interactive meeting with maritime stakeholders and the Nigeria Ports Authority.
Responding, the commissioner said that communication gadgets were imported tools of operation and that the officers did not need to request for them before they were provided.
Aderanti said it was regrettable that there were no operational serviceable vehicles for the police officers to work with.
“It is a sensitive environment. I don’t think we should operate at the port without the necessary tools. We are supposed to have an adequate communication network at the port,” he said.
Aderanti added that the problem of shortage of manpower at the command would be solved soon.
He urged the officers and men to exhibit high level of professionalism in the performance of their duties. [NAN]

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

News: ‘These kidnapping are unconscionable’ – Michelle Obama

US First lady Michelle Obama condemned the “unconscionable” kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls, saying the action was taken by “a terrorist group determined to keep these girls from getting an education.”
“Like millions of people across the globe, my husband and I are outraged and heartbroken” over the mass kidnapping by the terrorist group Boko Haram, the first lady said Saturday in the White House weekly address.
President Barack Obama has directed his administration to do everything possible to help the Nigerian government, she said.
The first lady has joined the President in the past in delivering the White House weekly address, but this was her first time delivering it solo.
Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls in April, an act that has become the focal point of a worldwide social media campaign demanding their return.
Earlier this week, the first lady tweeted a photo of herself with a sign that said: #BringBackOurGirls.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

News: Amnesty International claims military was pre-informed of abduction, military denies claims

The  human rights group,Amnesty International (AI), yesterday  returned a damning verdict on the  military for its handling of  last month’s  abduction of 276 students of the Government Girls Secondary School,Chibok by terrorists.
The group claimed in a lengthy report in Abuja that despite having been tipped off by residents four hours before insurgents of the Islamist sect,Boko Haram, struck at the school, security forces  deployed in Borno State  failed to live up to expectation.
It is the first   technical /operational insight into the abduction .
It said its  investigation revealed that only 17 soldiers and fewer policemen were on ground in Chibok.
They lacked  resources to  withstand the  rampaging Boko Haram insurgents and  were easily overpowered  while   attempting  to repel the invaders, it said.
 Amnesty International  said that had the military been pro-active,the Boko Haram attack could have been averted.
“The Nigerian security forces failed to act on advance warnings about Boko Haram’s armed raid on the state-run boarding school in Chibok which led to the abduction of more than 240 schoolgirls on 14-15 April,” the group said in the report which it explained was based on testimonies it gathered and which were independently verified..
The security forces,according to it, “ had more than four hours of advance warning about the attack but did not do enough to stop it,” adding  that the military headquarters in Maiduguri was “aware of the impending attack soon after 7pm on 14 April, close to four hours before Boko Haram began their assault on the town.”
It  said”but an inability to muster troops – due to poor resources and a reported fear of engaging with the often better-equipped armed groups – meant that reinforcements were not deployed to Chibok that night.
“The small contingent of security forces based in the town – 17 army personnel as well as local police –attempted to repel the Boko Haram assault but were overpowered and forced to retreat. One soldier reportedly died.”
Giving  graphic details of its findings on the distress signals raised by locals before the abduction,Amnesty International said:  “Between 7pm on 14 April and 2am on 15 April, the military commands in Damboa, 36.5 km away from Chibok, and Maiduguri, 130 km away from Chibok, were repeatedly alerted to the threat by both security and local officials.
“According to sources interviewed by Amnesty, local civilian patrols (known as “vigilantes”, set up by the military and local authorities) in Gagilam, a neighbouring village, were among the first to raise the alarm on the evening of 14 April after a large group of unidentified armed men entered their village on motorbikes and said they were headed to Chibok.
“This set off a rapid chain of phone calls to alert officials, including the Borno State Governor and senior military commanders based in Maiduguri.”
It quoted a local official who was contacted by Gagilam residents  as saying:”At around 10:00 PM on 14 April, I called [several] security officers to inform them about earlier information I had received from the vigilantes in Gagilam village. They had told us that strange people had arrived in their village that evening on motorbikes and they said they were heading to Chibok.I made several other calls, including to Maiduguri. I was promised by the security people that reinforcement were on their way.”
Continuing,the group said:”Another local official was contacted by herdsmen who said that armed men had asked where the Government Girls Secondary School was located in Chibok.
“At around 11:45 PM, a convoy reportedly numbering up to 200 armed Boko Haram fighters – on motorbikes and in trucks – arrived in Chibok town and engaged in a gunfight with a small number of police and soldiers based there.
“Outnumbered and outgunned, the security forces eventually fled in the small hours of 15 April. Some of the Boko Haram fighters proceeded to the Government Girls Secondary School and abducted more than 240 schoolgirls.”
The AI said it spoke with two military officers who admitted that the military knew of the pending attack.
“Two senior officers in Nigeria’s armed forces confirmed that the military was aware of the planned attack even prior to the calls received from local officials.
“One officer said the commander was unable to mobilize reinforcements. He described to Amnesty the difficulties faced by frontline soldiers in north-eastern Nigeria:
“There’s a lot of frustration, exhaustion and fatigue among officers and [troops] based in the hotspots…many soldiers are afraid to go to the battle fronts.
“Amnesty’s requests for a reaction from the military headquarters in Abuja have gone unanswered.
“Since the 14 April raid, a climate of confusion and suspicion appears to have slowed down the Nigerian authorities’ efforts to locate and free the abducted schoolgirls.
“On 16 April, a senior Defence Ministry spokesperson said that almost all of the abducted girls had been rescued and only eight were still missing. The next day he had to retract that statement.
AI’s Africa Director  of  Research and Advocacy, Netsanet Belay who released the report  asked the Federal Government to bring back the girls safely.
Belay also called for effective collaboration by all agencies to rescue the abducted girls.
His words: “The fact that Nigerian security forces knew about Boko Haram’s impending raid, but failed to take the immediate action needed to stop it, will only amplify the national and international outcry at this horrific crime.
“It amounts to a gross dereliction of Nigeria’s duty to protect civilians, who remain sitting ducks for such attacks. The Nigerian leadership must now use all lawful means at their disposal to secure the girls’ safe release and ensure nothing like this can happen again.
“The climate of suspicion and lack of transparency about the rescue effort has been unhelpful – all authorities must work together to ensure the girls are brought home safely and more must be done to protect civilians in future.”
It asked the federal government  to provide adequate information to families of  the abducted girls on the authorities’ current efforts to ensure their safe release.
“The families – and the abducted girls, once they are freed – must be provided with adequate medical and psychological support,” it said.
The National Security Adviser, Mr. Sambo Dasuki, the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, the Service Chiefs and the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar had on Thursday visited Chibok on a fact-finding mission.
But no member of the delegation spoke on what happened on the night of April 14 before Boko Haram invaded Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok.
The Defence Headquarters yesterday denied that the military had  advance warning on the invasion of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok where 276 girls were abducted.
It said patrolling troops only received information of an ongoing attack on Chibok and calked for reinforcement from Maiduguri , about 120kilometres away.
It described the findings of Amnesty International as false and unfounded.
The Director Defence Information/Coordinator, Maj-Gen. Chris Olukolade,  who made the clarifications in a statement in Abuja warned against campaigns which could  portray the military in bad light and cause disaffection.
Dismissing the allegation as  very unfortunate and untrue,Olukolade said:“Much as the Nigerian military appreciates the global concern and show of solidarity with the country at this trying moments, falsehood should not be introduced as a means of assessing the situation.
“It has to be categorically stated that the claims by Amnesty International in its report that security forces had advance warning about the abduction of students of Government Secondary School Chibok, Borno State by terrorists is unfounded.
“Contrary to the organization’s claims, troops in Maiduguri did not receive four hours forewarning about the attacks.
“Rather, they received information of an ongoing attack on Chibok community from troops on patrol who on noting the attack engaged the terrorists and called for more reinforcement to contain them.”
The DHQ gave  an insight into efforts made to reinforce troops in Chibok.
 “As the troops on reinforcement traversed the over 120km rugged and tortuous road from Maiduguri to Chibok, they ran into an ambush by terrorists who engaged them in fierce firefight and a number of soldiers lost their lives.
“Another set of soldiers also mobilized for the mission arrived after the terrorists had escaped due to a series of misleading information that slowed down the pursuit.
“It must therefore be clearly stated that contrary to the claim by the Amnesty International, the information received by troops at the Division Headquarters in Maiduguri was not a forewarning but the call for reinforcement by troops on patrol.  “Considering the vastness of the mission area, deployment has been more of patrols than static.”
The DHQ said troops were never at any time afraid of confronting Boko Haram insurgents.
The statement said: “The imputation of cowardice on the part of troops is particularly confounding as the military has internal mechanism to deal with such tendencies.
“These spurious allegations are obviously a continuation of the campaign intended to cause disaffection, portray the military in bad light and undermine the counter-terrorism efforts.
“Although the Chibok incident is still subject to more investigation, the Defence Headquarters appeals to individuals and organizations to refrain from circulating spurious allegations that could undermine both the operation and investigation of conduct of the mission generally.”

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

ODD: World’s most expensive selfie worths $143billion

Please Note: The Above Picture is NOT for sale

The selfie fever has gripped the world with millions taking the special kind of photo including the rich, the powerful and the famous.
President Barack Obama joined the trend during the funeral of late Nelson Mandela and one can’t forget the world’s most popular selfie, taken during the Oscars by Ellen DeGeneres, which got over 4 million retweets.
Well the picture above is the world’s richest selfie featuring Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and his financial partner Charlie Munger who have a combined net worth of $143 billion.
The woman in the photo is Becky Quick, the anchor of CNBC Squawk Box, the show on which the photo was taken.
Now you agree with me, that this indeed is the World Most Expensive Selfie

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

CelebGist: Chris Brown to spend 4 months in jail for violating probation

Embattled singer Chris Brown has just been sentenced to a year in L.A. County Jail for violating his probation stemming from his 2009 assault on Rihanna. Chris had admitted today in court that he violated his probation in the DC fight with one of the Paparazzi. That’s all the judge needed to hear.  He sentenced Chris to 1 year in jail.
However, good news now is that Chris could be released by this week’s end because he was given credit for the 234 days time he has served – 116 days he spent in rehab, and another 59 days behind bars. Meaning he only has 131 more days to go.
BUT, TMZ reports that the L.A. County Sheriff’s Dept has been releasing inmates sentenced to 1 year after 240 days, which is just 6 days shy for Chris Brown.  So he could be released in days.
The judge could have gone a lot harder — 4 years in prison.  But Chris got a break because the judge took into account he was recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which could account for some of the violence.  The judge also ordered Chris to attend therapy sessions with a shrink 2 times a week.   And he must submit to random drug testing 3 times a week. Judge James R. Brandlin also reinstated and extended Brown’s probation, which is now due to be up next January.
Chris is not out of the legal woods … his D.C. assault trial is set to start in the following months.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

MusicUpdate: Danagog_Pelemo (Prod by Shizzi)

HKN Gang’s recent signee, Danagog, drops his first official single under the label titled “Pelemo” (a Yoruba word meaning big) produced by super-hitmaker Shizzi.
Known for his funky and upbeat style of music, Danagog switches this style up a little bit with Shizzi at the production end to give us this banging highlife tune!!!
Download and enjoy

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

News: Nyanya Blasts masterminds have been arrested- President Jonathan claims

President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday revealed that the masterminds of the two deadly bomb blasts that rocked Nyanya, a suburb of the Federal Capital Territory have been arrested and are currently helping the security agencies in their efforts to unmask their financiers.
Vanguard reports President Jonathan said this while fielding questions from journalists at the end of the 24th World Economic Forum for Africa, WEFA, held in Abuja which ended yesterday.
He also said that the Federal Government had earmarked $10 million as matching grant to the efforts by the international community to rescue the 230 abducted female students of the Government Girls Secondary School, GGSS, Chibok in Borno State.
Jonathan said he had declared a total war on Boko Haram ‘’terror group’’ to rout it out of existence in the country, warning that anybody thinking that the spate of bombings and other devastation activities by the Boko Haram sect in Nigeria would force his administration to bend over forward and negotiate power with the sect or their sponsors should rather have a re-think as such a situation would not arise.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

CelebGist: Genevieve tells CNN “We wont stop protesting until the girls are found”

Genevieve Nnaji Last night granted CNN an interview about the missing school girls, where she said ‘we won’t stop until the girls are found’. The interview was conducted by Max Foster.  Read below;

Genevieve: Everyone is involved. We are all mothers, we are all humans and these are young girls that have been taken into captivity and uh…. we just felt that as.. some of us who have a bigger face and more recognizable in terms of being celebrities and having a large fan base, we thought it’s our responsibility to help shed light and bring the fight to the forefront and stop this inhumane act. Continue below….

There has been some criticism of the authorities in Nigeria that they were slow to react to this. What’s your reading into that?

Genevieve: Um, for me I think it would be unfair to say our government was slow to react because no one knew whether they reacted or not. The thing is we weren’t told, that’s the problem, we didn’t know if they were aware of the situation or not. So, the major problem people are having is that lack of communication between the government and the people. We just wanted them to, at least, react to us. And make it aware to our knowledge that they know what was going on, we knew there was a problem at hand, its just that lack of communication..

Has it improved now?

Genevieve: Well, it has improved a whole lot, Now we can see things being put in place, now we can see the efforts being made and again, that will be credited to the noise that has been made, towards the campaigning that’s been made around the world, you know, the global community having an interest in this. So, we are grateful for all the attention. What it has done is create hope in a situation that seemed hopeless in the beginning.

What do you make of other countries offering military support of various forms. Is that something that you welcome or would you rather that the Nigerian authority deal with it themselves?

Genevieve: This has been going on way too long and um…. there’s no shame in asking for help and in taking it. The truth is, terrorism is not a country’s, it’s not our problem, it’s not a continent problem, it’s a global issue and if everyone can come together and help fight it at every point, at any part of the world, as long as we act as one again. This is a breach of human rights, it’s something that should concern each and everyone. So, it’s welcome.

How has this affected Nigeria as a nation?

Genevieve: I think this situation is becoming a bit too close to home and this has nothing to do with gender, religion or whatever. This is a human right problem and we are all human and what is going on is very, you know, inhumane if you ask me. And what it has done now is given us that confidence to know that our voices are loud enough to heard all around the world and we won’t stop.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

News: US Marines locate Chibok girls in Sambisa forest

There were indications yesterday that the 230 female students abducted by Boko Haram terrorists from the Government Girls’ Secondary School, GGSS, Chibok, Borno State, have been sited at the Sambisa Forest in Borno State, by the Special Forces of the United States Marines.
This was even as more US military officials arrived Nigeria yesterday to join local officials in the search while the UK team had earlier arrived in Abuja to support Nigerian government in its response to the abduction of over 200 school girls.
Sources told Saturday Vanguard in Abuja that members of the United States Marines who are already in Maiduguri following the promise by President Barak Obama to assist Nigeria in rescuing the abducted girls, located the girls inside the forest, using some Satellite equipment which combed the forest, located an assembly of the young girls and sent the images back to the Marines on ground in Maiduguri.
Aside locating the whereabouts of the girls in the dense forest, it was also, further gathered that one of the leaders of terrorist group who participated in the abduction of the girls was arrested by a combined team of the US Marines and Nigerian forces.
Sources said that the Boko Haram leader was arrested, through an advanced interceptor equipment which was used to track the terrorist while exchanging information with his colleagues in Sambisa Forest about the movements of American and Nigerian soldiers in Maiduguri.
His phone was subsequently traced to a location in Maiduguri where he was arrested and handed over to the Nigerian military.
The location of the girls in the forest is contrary to widespread reports that the girls had been distributed and ferried to the Nigerian border towns in Chad, Cameroon and Niger Republic.
Senator Ahmed Zanna, representing Borno Central District in whose Maiduguri home, an alleged Boko Haram top commander was once arrested told the Senate last week that he gave the Military an up-to-date information on how the girls could be rescued, but lamented that his information was largely ignored.
He spoke against the backdrop of the claim by the Boko Haram leader, Sheik Abubakar Shekau, last week that the girls were booties of war, who would be sold into slavery.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

News: CHIBOK schoolgirls: Names of 53 escapees released

Daily Trust has obtained a list of the 53 Chibok schoolgirls who escaped from Boko Haram captivity.
The list includes those who escaped on the night of their capture at the Government Secondary School Chibok, Borno State on April 14, as well as those who escaped from the Boko Haram camps where they were being held.
There has been controversy over the religious identities of the girls who escaped so far, which some commentators suggesting they were all Muslims. But the records obtained show that seven of the girls are Muslims, while the remaining are Christians, according to information provided by their parents.
Muslims – 7
 Habiba Yahya
 Zarah Umoru,
 Hadiza Hamidu
 Hauwa Ibrahim
 Yagana Musa
 Aishatu Usman
 Hamsatu Umoru
Christians – 46
Amina Thlawur
 Binawi Galam
 Lucy Dzakwa
 Hauwa Thlawur
 Kwanta Isa
 Asabe Yaga
 Hauwa Musa
 Hauwa John
 Hannatu Joshua
 Amina Yaga
 Sarah Amos
 Kauna Bitrus
 Dinna Lawan
 Hauwa Sani
 Luggwa Yahi
 Hamatu Ibrahim
 Pogu Bullum
 Sanya —-
Nkeki Duds,
 Hannatu Iliya
 Saratu Musa
 Solomi Yakubu
 Mary Katambi
 Awa Thlama
 Mary Yaga
 Godiya Simon
 Rejoice Yaga
 Yalmata Mutah
 Patience Bulus
 Dorcas Musa
 Mercy Paul
 Rahap Pogu
 Rifkatu Halai
 Thhlama Walla
 Deborah Ishaya
 Hadiza Kwakwi
 Filo Dauda
 Amos Mufah
 Naomi Lawan
 Asabe Nkeki
 Hadiza Yama
 Kuma Ishaku
 Solomi Bitrus
 Ladi Nkeki
 Rahap Yaga
 Comfort Agub

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

News: ‘Abducted Chibok girls likely split’- CNN

Cable News Network CNN claim the abducted Chibok girls have been most likely split or worse, sold off. Read how it was written on CNN below

Nigeria’s embattled leader vowed Boko Haram’s abduction of hundreds of schoolgirls would be the terror group’s undoing, even as authorities admitted Thursday the girls likely have been separated and taken out of the country.
President Goodluck Jonathan’s statements come amid mounting international outrage over the mass abduction and the government’s largely ineffective effort to subdue Boko Haram.
“By God’s grace, we will conquer the terrorists. I believe the kidnap of these girls will be the beginning of the end for terror in Nigeria,” Jonathan said at the opening of the World Economic Forum meeting in Nigeria’s capital city of Abuja.
He also acknowledged the offers of help from the United States, Britain, China and France, all of which have offered help in the weeks-old search for the girls who were snatched in mid-April from their beds at an all-girls school in rural northeastern Nigeria.
But the task of recovering the girls appeared to grow more complicated with news that U.S. intelligence believe the 276 girls have been split up.
“We do think they have been broken up into smaller groups,” U.S. Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said.
He declined to detail how U.S. officials came to the conclusion. It is a sentiment that has been echoed by a number of others, who believe the girls already have been moved out of Nigeria and into neighboring countries.
“The search must be in Niger, Cameroon and Chad, to see if we can find information,” former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the U.N.’s special envoy for global education, told CNN.
“It’s vital to use the information to find the girls before they are dispersed across Africa, which is a very real possibility.”
The girls have not been seen since Boko Haram militants abducted them on April 14 from the Government Girls Secondary School in rural Chibok, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) west of Maiduguri and some 600 miles from the capital of Abuja

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

News: CNN- ‘9 reasons why Chibok girls have not been found’

As the abduction of over 200 girls from a secondary school in Chibok, Borno State continues to make the headlines, many are asking the simple question – Why have the girls not been found yet?

Despite the international attention and efforts by the Nigerian government, over 3 weeks after their abduction, the vast majority of the girls are still missing. Just today a US Official is quoted to have said the “Abducted girls may have been separated”

Faith Karimi of CNN explores why this is the case. You can visit CNNto read the full article

1. It’s been more than three weeks
2. The forest borders Cameroon
3. Location and number of hostages are factors
4. Nigerian military isn’t the most trustworthy
5. It’s also ill-equipped
6. Boko Haram beheads negotiators
7. Its (Boko Haram) members are always on the move
8. Shekau is a cold, ruthless monster
9. The bounty on his (Shekau) head may not help much

We are hoping that with the added support of other countries, it amps up the rescue effort and all the girls return home safely.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

News: US to send less than ten troops to Nigeria to help find Chibok girls

A handful of U.S. troops will arrive in Nigeria in the next few days to help find nearly 300 girls kidnapped by the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, but the U.S. has no plans to launch any military operations, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said fewer than 10 troops are being sent as part of the larger U.S. assistance team to include State Department and Justice Department personnel. The military members will help with communications, logistics and intelligence-planning.

Warren said the U.S. was talking with Nigeria about information and intelligence-sharing, but nothing has been decided.

There are already about 70 military personnel in Nigeria, including 50 regularly assigned to the embassy, and 20 Marines have been there for training.

At the State Department, spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the department was moving swiftly to put a team in place at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja that can provide military, law enforcement and information-sharing assistance in support of Nigeria’s efforts to find and free the girls. She said the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria met Wednesday morning with Nigeria’s national security adviser.

“Our legal attache has been in touch with Nigerian police,” she said. “The FBI stands ready to send additional personnel, to provide technical and investigatory assistance, including expertise on hostage negotiations and USAID is working with partners on what we can do to be ready to provide victims’ assistance.”

Culled from SaharaReporters

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

MusicUpdate: Harikinzz_ft_Phlamtrix_Things Fall Apart

Harikinz(@harikinzz) and Phlamtrix(@Phlamtrix) are multi-talented rappers with a lot of inate talent.
Both have teamed up to cook this hot and massive tune due to their views of what they are seeing and have seen in the country Nigeria. You will truly agree that Things Are falling Apart.
This hot jam was produced by AUTOCLAVE RECORDS. Well download and enjoy.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

MusicUpdate: Victoria Kimani_Emotions (#BringBackOurGirls)

She may not be Nigerian, she may be Kenyan, but Chocolate City signee has added her voice to the growing voices of celebrities to the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, but this time she does it with an heart felt song she titles ‘Emotions’.
She samples lyrics from Mariah Carey’s Emotions and oh boy, she sang her heart out. This number is truly heart felt.
Well download and enjoy.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

News: Boko Haram bombs brigde linking Cameroon to Nigeria

The bombing and destruction of a small bridge linking Nigeria to Cameroon in Borno State today has caused mass destruction and confusion, killing at least 30 people!

According to SaharaReporters, the bombing occurred on the outskirts of Gamboru Ngala, site of a Monday Boko Haram attack that claimed the lives of over 300 village residents. The bridge links the immigration check points of both Cameroon and Nigeria.

 The bombing event took place on the same day of a mass burial in the town of Gamboru Ngala. It was there on Monday where a Boko Haram-led raid on the small village claimed the lives of over 300 residents, nearly ten per cent of the population.

Sources tell SaharaReporters that 315 people of the 336 who died in the Monday attack were buried in a solemn ceremony led by civic and religious leaders.

The Boko Haram has not claimed responsibility for this latest bombing attack, but residents of Gamboru Ngala told us that there is deep suspicion that the Islamist group is behind this latest attack in this vulnerable area.

Since the Monday attacks many of the local Gamboru Ngala youth have joined an anti-Islamist vigilante force in the smoldering village. It was created and scores of young people are helping Nigerian military forces in the area.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

CelebGist: Kim Kardashian joins #BringBackOurGirls campaign

Kim Kardashian has also joined the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. She took her campaign to the picture sharing forum Instagram and she shared the above picture with the caption below it.
She is the latest out of many international big names to have joined the campaign.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

Yabatech Registrar_ft_Patience Jonathan_There Is God o

Yaba College Of Technology Student Union Government Registrar, Opeyemi Bello has come out with a remix of Patience Jonathan’s outburst on national TV a few days ago.
But this time around he talks about ASUP strike that has been on for over 6months.
This one is titled ‘There Is God o’. Though it may sound funny, it is all true.
Well download it and share, let’s share the word about ASUP strike

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation

News: ‘Jonathan has been shockingly slow and inept’- New York Times

This was the article published by new york times on the issue of the abducted chibok girls.

 Three weeks after their horrifying abduction in Nigeria, 276 of the more than 300 girls who were taken from a school by armed militants are still missing, possibly sold into slavery or married off. Nigerian security forces apparently do not know where the girls are and the country’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, has been shockingly slow and inept at addressing this monstrous crime.

On Tuesday, the United Nations Children’s Fund said Boko Haram, the ruthless Islamist group that claimed responsibility for the kidnappings, abducted more young girls from their homes in the same part of the country in the northeast over the weekend. The group, whose name roughly means “Western education is a sin,” has waged war against Nigeria for five years.

Its goal is to destabilize and ultimately overthrow the government. The group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, said in a video released on Monday, “I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah.”This is not the first time Boko Haram has attacked students, killing young men and kidnapping young women. The security situation in Northeast Nigeria has steadily deteriorated.

In the first three months of this year, attacks by Boko Haram and reprisals by government security forces have killed at least 1,500 people, more than half of them civilians, according to Amnesty International. Until now, there has been little response to the violence, either in Nigeria or internationally. But the kidnapping of so many young girls, ages 12 to 15, has triggered outrage and ignited a rare antigovernment protest movement in Nigeria.

On Sunday, after weeks of silence, Mr. Jonathan admitted that “this is a trying time for our country,” and he said that Nigerians were justified in their anger against the government and appealed for international help.

The reaction of Mr. Jonathan’s wife, Patience, was stunningly callous; according to state news media, she told one of the protest leaders, “You are playing games. Don’t use schoolchildren and women for demonstrations again.

”Boko Haram’s claim that it follows Islamic teachings is nonsense. A pre-eminent Islamic theological institute, Al-Azhar in Egypt, denounced the abductions, saying it “completely contradicts the teachings of Islam and its tolerant principles.”

Although Boko Haram is believed to number no more than a few hundred men, Nigerian security forces have been unable to defeat them.Mr. Jonathan, who leads a corrupt government that has little credibility, initially played down the group’s threat and claimed security forces were in control.

It wasn’t until Sunday, more than two weeks after the kidnappings, that he called a meeting of government officials, including the leader of the girls’ school, to discuss the incident. There is no doubt the intelligence and investigation help President Obama offered on Monday is needed.

The kidnappings occurred just as President Jonathan is about to hold the World Economic Forum on Africa, with 6,000 troops deployed for security. That show of force may keep the delegates safe, but Nigeria’s deeply troubled government cannot protect its people, attract investment and lead the country to its full potential if it cannot contain a virulent insurgency.

Posted by @iam_SMD_ for @SMD_Nation


Content-Type: application/http; msgtype=response

WARC-Identified-Payload-Type: text/html

WARC-Truncated: length

WARC-Type: response

text:
Is Michelle Ang Taller Than Jimmy White?

Who is taller?!

Michelle Ang is shorter than Jimmy White by 13cm.

That's roughly 5 inches or 0.13 metres.

Have a look at Michelle Ang's and Jimmy White's pages to see some more information about their heights and names.

You can also check your height against theirs and see how you compare.

warcinfo:
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-179-56-52.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-05
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for January 2018
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf


text:
Solar Outdoor Lighting Systems Cut Costs and Promote Sustainability for New Neighborhood

solar lights

RICHMOND, Va.May 29, 2014 ( Solar Thermal Magazine ) –  Sol Inc., a global leader in commercial outdoor LED lighting solutions powered by solar, today announced that Premiere Homes LLC (PHL), a leading residential and commercial builder, has installed 21 of Sol’s top-of-pole mount commercial solar outdoor lighting systems at PHL’s newly completed Randolph West residential neighborhood development near downtown Richmond, Virginia.

After determining that traditional grid-tied street lighting was prohibitively expensive to install, PHL and the city of Richmond, chose the option of installing commercial solar outdoor lighting as part of its new neighborhood development project in Randolph West.  By avoiding the trenching, wiring and electrical work associated with traditional grid-tied street lighting, Sol’s systems were able to save the city time, money and the disruptions associated with installing underground wires that are required with traditional grid-tied lights. The efficient installation of the solar lights considerably lessened the traffic, parking and noise impacts on the new neighborhood while also providing a sustainable and efficient lighting solution.

“As we were developing the infrastructure for Randolph West, it soon became clear that grid-tied street lighting would be much less efficient and would add significant time to the project,” said Sean Bowers, chief operating officer at PHL.

Once we began to value-engineer possible options, we quickly identified Sol’s commercial solar outdoor lighting as the ideal solution.  Sol had the best product and they were suited to Richmond’s illumination guidelines. It was a win-win for all involved.

Randolph West, located at 1621 Kemper St., within walking distance of downtown Richmond, the Fan District and the historic Maymont and Byrd parks, is a residential neighborhood development containing 70 custom single family homes. Because of its use of solar lighting, the development was selected as a finalist for the Urban Land Institute’s Richmond Vision Awards in the “Transportation/Infrastructure” category.

“As demonstrated by the Randolph West project, solar-powered outdoor street lighting brings significant value to our community and helps us meet our sustainability, social and economic goals,” said Christopher L. Beschler, Chief Administrative Officer of Operations.

For this project, solar lighting was far more effective than traditional grid-tied street lighting, enabling us to provide our residents with visible proof of our city’s commitment to sustainability.

Sol, which has installed more than 60,000 systems in more than 60 countries on six continents over the past two decades, is contributing to the technological renaissance currently underway in the $11 billion global outdoor lighting market, and is currently the solar lighting market leader in North America.

“There is no doubt that commercial solar outdoor lighting is now a cost-effective and high quality alternative to traditional grid-tied outdoor lighting,” said Dibs Tailor, CEO of Sol. “As demonstrated by the public acclaim garnered by the Randolph West project, our commercial solar outdoor lighting systems provide significant economic benefits to budget-constrained municipal governments, while also contributing to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that mitigate the negative effects of global warming.”

About Sol Inc.

Sol Inc. is a global leader in commercial outdoor LED lighting solutions powered by solar energy and the market leader inNorth America. Sol Inc. has provided reliable, cost-effective, customized and esthetically pleasing solar lighting solutions for a wide range of lighting applications including roadways, parking lots, paths and trails, perimeter security, campuses, military bases, storage areas and for ad lights or monument signs. Sol’s lighting solutions are less expensive than grid-tied lighting for many applications because they eliminate the cost of wiring, trenching and other electrical and utility costs. In many cases, payback can be achieved immediately. For more information, please visit

ST Staff Writers About ST Staff Writers
This post was prepared by Solar Thermal Magazine staff.

No tags for this post.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


text:
Scientists Craft a Semiconductor Only Three Atoms Thick With Implications for Solar and LED Technologies

semiconductor research

Scientists have developed what they believe is the thinnest-possible semiconductor, a new class of nanoscale materials made in sheets only three atoms thick.

“Heterojunctions are fundamental elements of electronic and photonic devices,” said senior author Xiaodong Xu, a UW assistant professor of materials science and engineering and of physics. “Our experimental demonstration of such junctions between two-dimensional materials should enable new kinds of transistors, LEDs, nanolasers, and solar cells to be developed for highly integrated electronic and optical circuits within a single atomic plane.”The researchers have demonstrated that two of these single-layer semiconductor materials can be connected in an atomically seamless fashion known as aheterojunction. This result could be the basis for next-generation flexible and transparent computing, better light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, and solar technologies.

The research was published online this week in Nature Materials.

The researchers discovered that two flat semiconductor materials can be connected edge-to-edge with crystalline perfection. They worked with two single-layer, or monolayer, materials – molybdenum diselenide and tungsten diselenide – that have very similar structures, which was key to creating the composite two-dimensional semiconductor.

Collaborators from the electron microscopy center at the University of Warwick in England found that all the atoms in both materials formed a single honeycomb lattice structure, without any distortions or discontinuities. This provides the strongest possible link between two single-layer materials, necessary for flexible devices. Within the same family of materials it is feasible that researchers could bond other pairs together in the same way.

semiconductor research

This photoluminescence intensity map shows a typical piece of the lateral heterostructures. The junction region produces an enhanced light emission, indicating its application potential in optoelectronics. Courtesy of University of Washington

After a while, evaporated atoms from the second material then attached to the edges of the triangle to create a seamless semiconducting heterojunction.The researchers created the junctions in a small furnace at the UW. First, they inserted a powder mixture of the two materials into a chamber heated to 900 degrees Celsius (1,652 F). Hydrogen gas was then passed through the chamber and the evaporated atoms from one of the materials were carried toward a cooler region of the tube and deposited as single-layer crystals in the shape of triangles.

“This is a scalable technique,” said Sanfeng Wu, a UW doctoral student in physics and one of the lead authors. “Because the materials have different properties, they evaporate and separate at different times automatically. The second material forms around the first triangle that just previously formed. That’s why these lattices are so beautifully connected.”

With a larger furnace, it would be possible to mass-produce sheets of these semiconductor heterostructures, the researchers said. On a small scale, it takes about five minutes to grow the crystals, with up to two hours of heating and cooling time.

“We are very excited about the new science and engineering opportunities provided by these novel structures,” said senior author David Cobden, a UW professor of physics. “In the future, combinations of two-dimensional materials may be integrated together in this way to form all kinds of interesting electronic structures such as in-plane quantum wells and quantum wires, superlattices, fully functioning transistors, and even complete electronic circuits.”

Other co-authors are Chunming Huang and Pasqual Rivera of UW physics; Ana Sanchez, Richard Beanland and Jonathan Peters at the ; Jason Ross of UW materials science and engineering; and Wang Yao, a theoretical physicist of the University of Hong Kong.The researchers have already demonstrated that the junction interacts with light much more strongly than the rest of the monolayer, which is encouraging for optoelectric and photonic applications like solar cells.

This research was funded by the Department of Energy, the UW’s Clean Energy Institute, the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong, the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong, the Croucher Foundation, the Science City Research Alliance and the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s Strategic Development Fund.

Grant numbers: U.S. Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division (DE-SC0008145) (DE-SC0002197).

(This article was written by Michelle Ma at the  University of Washington)

Top Photo: As seen under an optical microscope, the heterostructures have a triangular shape. The two different monolayer semiconductors can be recognized through their different colors.  Image courtesy of University of Washington

Press Release About Press Release

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


text:
At Sea

The stars shone brighter than I’d ever seen before as we floated together that night. There’s something about the stillness and purity of night on the ocean that turns faint starlight into a bath of tranquility.

The waves rose and fell with a slow, steady confidence, lifting our small lifeboat toward the stars in offering and then dropping it down between the swells in an almost protective way. Tom didn’t feel the same sense of peace and acceptance I did. Whenever the water on either side of us rose above the short walls of our boat, holding us in the valley of two gentle waves, his breath would quicken, hid grip on my hand tighten.

“I’m  sorry, babe,” he said, long after I thought he’d fallen asleep (or whatever passes for sleep when you’re floating on a lifeboat lost at sea overnight.)

“Don’t be sorry, honey. It’s not your fault.”

I licked my dry lips and reminded myself for the four hundredth time that salt water would kill me faster than no water.

“If I hadn’t insisted on this cruise we wouldn’t be out here, about to die of dehydration.”

“Stop. We are not going to die.” I grabbed his hand. “Look at me, Tom.” I waited until I saw him turn his head toward me, waited until I saw the starlight glint of the dampness in his eyes. “We. Are. Not. Going. To. Die. Trust me. We’ll be telling this story at parties for years. People will be sick of this story, we’ll tell it so often.” I kissed his fingertips and held his hand to my cheek. “This is not your fault.”

He wrapped his fingers around mine and we fell silent once more, scanning the horizon for glimmers of dawn or the shadowy masts of a passing ship. The stars twinkled and the waves rolled, just as they had before we arrived and as they would long after we had gone.

11/14/17 prompt: trust, tranquility, forgiveness

One thought on “At Sea

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: Logo

You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s


WARC-Identified-Payload-Type: application/xhtml+xml

text:
Skip to content

Bring Smacking Back Innit…

February 10, 2012

…And Let’s Get Our Kids Back on Track? (Soul Pages Archive Refixed)

David ‘I’m Running For Mayor’ Lammy  was recently headlined in the Daily Mail saying –  ‘The Smacking Ban led to the riots…’   the politician reasoned that a contributing factor towards the cause of the London riots which took place back in August 2011 was that, because of all these new laws defending children, parents had lost their power to control and chastise their children properly out of fear of getting thrown into jail.

Now, I’m gonna be real stereotypical and say that the parents who initially didn’t agree with smacking children were the kind of parents who:

  • Put their kids on kiddie leashes when out shopping yet fail to use the leash effectively when the child tried to wander…
  • Uses the words ‘Time out’  and ‘darling’ in the same sentence…
  • Allows the child to have tantrums in public, because they believe smacking will suppress the child’s human right to display anger…
  • Let their teens swear at them and around them because, ‘They’re just expressing themselves’…
  • Allow their children to smoke and experiment with drink and drugs, because, ‘They did a lot worse when they were kids’…
  • Let the boyfriend/girlfriend come round and not leave for a couple of weeks because they want to be down with the ‘yoof’…
  • Allow their kids to drink alcohol at the table from age 2 so as to learn how to include drink within their daily schedule ‘So European darlink’...

Those parents are the ones who believed that a light smacking was comparable to ABH / GBH /Assault With a Deadly Weapon. ‘Children have rights’ they say, ‘adults can go to prison if they attack another adult , the same should apply to parents beating children!’ others shout,  ‘it teaches kids to be violent adults.’ some exaggerate…

But the problem is, those easy, breezy hug a bad child parents tend to be parents of kids who aren’t facing life as the average person knows it…Kids who don’t look out across dirt and deprivation, who aren’t trying to avoid crime and hostility and don’t have to deal with racism and classism…

Not to say well to do kids don’t have their own issues that set them off the rails, not to say all working class parents do believe in beating their kids…but we need to re-set the balance a small piece!

Which THANK-YA JESUS I think it’s beginning to…Because according to an article in the Daily Mail a while back it would seem that these same softly-softly parents have started to realise that  a little smack goes a long way…READ HERE which supports part of Lammy’s statement that adults need to reclaim their authority and quick fast if we want to shape the future generation for the better.

Those parents who also seem to have the governments’ ear are finally waking up to the fact that if your child is constantly and routinely bad, ‘Time Out’ aint gonna cut it. Regardless your walk of life ALL kids need chastising to help them become well rounded individuals.  Today’s children/teens have too many rights. Too many reasons to say ‘I’m telling’, holding their parents to ransom just ‘cos their favourite character on television made it cool to ARGUE BACK!

(This is when you know life’s gone too far when a black child has the strength and bravado to talk back to his mother like this…don’t care ’bout my racial profiling that’s NOT how we ever did!)

But yet here we are 2012 and black kids over here are acting…like they got Royal Blood! As much as certain people are saying white kids are acting black…

Scroll to 01:19 to hear David Starkey’s oh so glorious analogy

Can I then be so bold as to say, that black children today are now acting W….estern? With all this talking back, and no fear, and ‘So WHAT I don’t care-ing-ness’ ?

See cos back in my day, in the average black household we only knew this Other type of parent…this Other type of parent knew that freedom and rights for children were not the way forward…this Other type of parent wouldn’t even acknowledge any smacking ban or law because according to them and even as David Lammy said…‘current legislation stops actions that lead to a reddening of the skin – which for a lot of my non-white residents isn’t really an issue…’  absolutely securing the fact that the law wasn’t meant to apply to this Other type of parent..(cos how can you redden skin that’s black like coal? #justsayin’)…this Other type of parent would/could never agree to the fact that a ‘beating’ was worthy of jail time…they’d argue with the judge throughout the proceedings…‘Your honor you want to jail me because I beat my child for stealing from Tesco? [insert black country cussings here]’

You see cos this Other type of parent would…

  • Buy a leash for their child NOT to keep them close whilst out and about but to use it as a weapon! Because when you’re out walking with this Other type of parent…running off, walking too fast, walking too slow, touching things, asking for things, complaining for food/the toilet/being too hot/too tired, speaking above a whisper…  is not an option! (ESPECIALLY when out shopping)
  • Time Out will forever mean a magazine about where to go in London…because according to the rules of this Other type of parent… naughtiness doesn’t get a pause, instead it gets dealt with instantly via a quick slap, or, the ‘Eye of Death’ which warned of a later beating, to which in that instance ‘Time Out’  would mean ‘Time Out’ until this Other type of parent can get to a place where they can beat their child comfortably…
  • To swear around this Other type of parent, would mean the child was already bags packed, in the car and just about brave enough to shout the swear word at the Other type of parent before speeding off and never returning…and GUARANTEED when the child decided to return home and say sorry at whatever age, the beating they escaped would be delivered before being welcomed back…the swear word they shouted when they left punctuating every slap.
  • Smoking because the parent smoked is irrelevant, because the rule according to this type of Other parent is:  DO AS I SAY NOT WHAT I DO BECAUSE I SAID SO. This also applies to alcohol. (Drugs would not be an issue because they were never taken by this Other type of parent, so understanding or sympathy in this instance is ZERO tolerance…DRUGS! IN THIS HOUSE…(prayers, church, beatings) etc. etc. etc….
  • And I mean after alllllllllll that, which child would dare to bring any boyfriend/girlfriend round to their house to be introduced to this Other type of parent before marriage…sometimes even after.

I’d like to take this moment to say THANK YOU MUM I love you for being that ‘Other’ type-a parent.

Ebs xxx

(P.S. Of course if you are a parent with part of your mind in the wind, and you can’t control your beating arm then I beg, I’m not talking to you! Seek help!)

From → Just Sayin'...

One Comment
  1. I’ve now realised that when they first reported this story about David Lammy, I thought they’d said that smacking is what led to the riots, so I was dissing him. I now stand well and truly corrected and FULLY agree with him.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: Logo

You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this:


text:
The End Of The Beginning

Sermon  •  Submitted
0 ratings
· 1 view
Notes & Transcripts

Acts 1:4 – 11

Verse 3 of chapter 1 ends with the words “The Kingdom of God.” Given what comes next, that is very appropriate. Jesus tells his Apostles to wait for the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem. They then prove that they need to follow his advice by their next question. “Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”

It is not an entirely unreasonable question. Certainly it is one that had been asked a number of times during Jesus’ earthly ministry. I think it is interesting and more than a little coincidental that Jesus starts with talking about the Spirit and the Apostles want to know about the Kingdom.

Of course the cause of the misunderstanding is an incomplete understanding of the kingdom and a near complete ignorance of the Holy Spirit. But it is easy to say that someone doesn’t get something, especially when you stand in possession of information that they lack. Looking back over twenty-plus centuries from our 21st century vantage point, it is easy for us to see that the Davidic kingdom would not be re-established in Jerusalem in the first century. But standing in Jerusalem in AD 30, less than 40 days after the Resurrection, things looked very different. But Jesus never lost focus: he knew what his Apostles and the Church needed: the Holy Spirit.

It is almost as though you can hear the Apostolic response to Jesus command to wait for the Holy Spirit: “Yeah, sure. But tell us the REALLY important news.”

I personally think that their confusion is pretty easy to understand. When Jesus was being judged by Pilate he said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here.” But back in Matthew 3:1 – 2 Matthew writes, “In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”

So which is it? Is the kingdom “not of this world” or is it “at hand”? At the time of the crucifixion Peter was obviously of the opinion that the kingdom was of this world, because he cut off the High Priest’s servant’s ear to protect Jesus. The Jews understood very well that the Messiah was coming in David’s lineage and it was easy to make the connection between that lineage with its earthly kingdom and the re-establishment of the earthly kingdom.

But God clearly had something else in mind and that is why Jesus answered their kingdom question as he did. In Matthew 13 Jesus said a number of things about the kingdom which we need to understand. Let’s look at verses 31 – 33 for an insight that will be helpful.

These two parables tell us what to expect in the way that the kingdom is going to grow. Yeast and mustard seeds both start out very small and they grow amazingly large. We will see that there are about 120 disciples left in Jerusalem at the time of the Ascension. From that 120 came the yeast that eventually turned the world upside down. So, assuming that Jesus wanted us to learn something from his parables, we can take away at least two lessons. First, the mustard seed and the yeast teach us that we should not despise small beginnings. The church started with a very few, but has grown to enormous size. Second, the yeast works through the dough to make the whole batch rise. We can see from this that the whole batch is not yeast. We can also see that the yeast has an influence on the batch, not the other way around. So there seems to be two ways in which we can see the kingdom of heaven.

First, we can say that it grows from a tiny beginning to a huge finish. That is the lesson of the mustard plant. Second, we see that is grows in reference to the surrounding society. The leaven is leavening the society: it make society into something it was not before. This is the history of western civilization. The church grows, almost without reference to the surrounding society. But it grows in such as way that it affects everything around it.

But, how does this happen? Was it the clever scheme of the Apostles? No, it was the plan of God. All of the effects that we see came from his plan. And I do not think that these effects (the arts, western civilization, and modern progress) were simply accidental add-ons. Many things had to develop at the same time for the Church to work. And the most important was the coming of the Holy Spirit.

This is the reason that Jesus told them to wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came. We have spoken numerous times about the relationship of the Law to the Spirit. Jeremiah told us that in the New Covenant, God would write his law on our hearts. The Spirit came on the Day of Pentecost, which was the feast which celebrated the giving of the Law. Therefore we believe that the Holy Spirit is the primary difference between the Old and New Covenants. Paul tells us that no one was ever justified by the deeds of the law. Because of that we believe that the Holy Spirit is the representative of God’s Law. He gets written on our hearts when we become a Christian. He guides our lives after we are Christians.

See the rest →
See the rest →


text:
Pot of Gold Cupcakes

Tomorrow is St Patrick’s Day! To celebrate, why not give this recipe a try? My Pot of Gold Cupcakes are easy enough to make with kids and you probably already have all of the ingredients in your pantry. On the outside, they look like a regular chocolate cupcake, but once you bite in, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find a hidden Reese’s like “golden” peanut butter filling. Decorate with your favorite version of a candy rainbow and you’ve got a  St Patrick’s Day themed dessert fit for a leprechaun!

I love hiding surprise fillings in cupcakes. They add a “wow” factor that is sure to impress. Fillings like the one for this cupcake are some of the easiest fillings to do. This Reese’s style filling gets baked right into the cupcake meaning that there is very little fussing over the cupcakes after they’ve come out of the oven. Just assemble, bake, and frost, and that’s it!

Start by filling your cupcake pans with cupcake liners. For this recipe, I chose a golden liner to help drive home the pot of gold theme.

Next, mix together the cake batter. This rich chocolate cake batter is probably the easiest cake that I make. You literally throw all of the ingredients into a bowl together and mix them with a hand or stand mixer. That’s it! And to top it all off, this cake comes out perfect and moist every time. What could be better?

After you’ve finished mixing, the batter should be smooth, slightly thick, and look something like this:

Fill the cupcake liners only HALF way. Because you will be adding a peanut butter filling to each of these, you don’t want to overfill them at this point.

Now you’ll want to mix up the peanut butter filling. It’s made up of just two ingredients; peanut butter and powdered sugar. You mix together equal parts of both of these until they are smooth and fully combined.

The filling is ready to go when it looks similar to this:

To fill each cupcake, simply roll the peanut butter filling into small balls (about 1/2 tbs of filling per ball).

Sink the balls into the middle of each cupcake.

Don’t worry about trying to sink the filling all the way to the bottom of the cupcake or about covering the filling up with batter. The filling will naturally sink to the bottom while the cupcake bakes and the cupcake will bake over the top. Just sink the filling down far enough that the batter begins to surround it.

Continue doing this until all of the cupcakes are filled.

Bake the cupcakes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 – 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Allow the cupcakes to cool completely before frosting.

For the frosting, I used a traditional Buttercream Frosting that I colored green.

I always opt to pipe frosting on my cupcakes rather than spreading it with a knife or spatula. Piping frosting on is actually much faster than icing by hand and I feel that it gives the cupcakes a much more finished look. If you don’t have piping bags and piping tips at home, a great shortcut is to use a ziplock bag in place of a piping bag.

With just a couple of simple steps, you’ll be piping like a pro!

Start by folding the top rim of the bag down to expose the inside of the bag.

Open the bag up as wide as you can and fill one corner of the bag with frosting.

Flip the rim of the bag back up and twist to create a seal just above the top of the frosting.

Cut off the corner of the bag to create an opening. The bigger you make the opening, the more frosting that will come out at a time. For this basic swirled look, I cut off about 1/2 an inch of the corner. Remember that you can always cut more if you need to, so start with a little and cut more if you decide you’d like a wider opening.

To make this swirled look, start on the outside of the cupcake and pipe around in a circle, spiraling in toward the center of the cupcake.

Once all of the cupcakes are frosted, decorate with your favorite rainbow colored candies. I was planning to use those sour rainbow fruit strips, but after searching several stores, I came to the conclusion that they don’t sell those in the UK (at least not in the stores in our area) so I settled for multi-colored M&M’s. I think they turned out cute and the M&M’s certainly taste better than the fruit strips! Plus, someone had to eat all of the brown M&M’s that couldn’t be used in the rainbow. It was a sacrifice I was willing to make.

The filling really does taste just like a Reese’s filling. It’s a great surprise when you take a bite. My husband absolutely loves Reese’s and he just couldn’t say enough good things about this cupcake.

Share them with your friends or keep them all for yourself. You can’t go wrong with these delightful treats!

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

Pot of Gold Cupcakes

Makes 30 cupcakes

For the Cake:

  • 2 cups flour
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 cup softened butter
  • 3/4 cup water
  • 3/4 cup buttermilk
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1/2 cup cocoa
  • 2 eggs

For the Filling:

  • 3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
  • 3/4 cup powdered sugar

1 bag of M&M’s for decoration (optional)

Buttercream Frosting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Begin by making the cake. Combine all ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Beat on low with a mixer for 30 seconds, then beat on high for 3 minutes. Fill cupcake liners 1/2 full with the cake batter.

For the filling, stir together the peanut butter and powdered sugar until smooth and well combined.

Roll the peanut butter filling into 1/2 tbs sized balls. Sink one ball of filling into each cupcake.

Bake the cupcakes for 20 – 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool completely.

Frost the cupcakes with a buttercream frosting colored green and decorate with rainbow candies.

Pot of Gold

2 thoughts on “Pot of Gold Cupcakes

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s


text:
Obama administration knew millions could not keep their health insurance – Investigations

However, the law was written to make sure that people could keep their insurance, that is the insurance that they had when the law was passed. The reporters in this story, themselves say “The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. “ And how is a regulation written by the Department of Human Services considered to have “narrowed” the provisions when it says that “if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date — the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example — the policy would not be grandfathered?” How can that be anything but a clarification of the existing intent that what was in effect, without any changes, will be acceptable and if anything changes the policy is not legal?

Then there is the mention in the article of “normal turnover” in the individual market affecting people’s ability to keep their policy (meaning 40 to 67 percent of customers will not be able to keep their policy). What would the Affordable Care Act have to do with “normal turnover” in the individual market?” So let’s get this straight. If the President, in talking about the Affordable Care Act while being under attack from conservatives for orchestrating a government takeover of healthcare, offers assurance about there being no government effort to force people to buy from the government or to give up their junk healthcare plans, he should be held accountable for “normal turnover.” The effects of normal turnover means he lied?

For those who are really concerned about premiums and healthcare cost, the fact is Americans would pay less for healthcare if they had more government involvement and not that provided by overmatched state insurance secretaries like the one in Mississippi who couldn’t even attempt to establish an exchange without Heritage and Cato coming in to stop it with the assistance of a Governor who won’t expand Medicaid to assist the most vulnerable and who has no problem with the indigent care expense being passed along to customers through higher prices, ignoring the available federal aid. The Japanese pay a substantially smaller part of their GDP for health care (8%, about half as much as the US) and a large part of the reason is that they have a government body (the Ministry of Health and Welfare), which acts on behalf of the Japanese healthcare customer. And we, in America, can’t even get a repeal of the McCarran Ferguson Act (antitrust law, something the RepubliCons never propose) to provide  that supposedly beloved free-market benefit from competition because the big insurers like the banks run this place.

And then you have a flak, like Robert Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates (wonder if they get any insurance industry money), pointing a Jan-Brewer-finger-of-outrage at the administration because the insurance industry changed policies so that the policies couldn’t be grandfathered. So the President is to blame because he knew that the scumbags would do exactly what they did.

So when you see people complain about premiums rising and how they were better off before the Affordable Care Act, which makes available insurance which doesn’t discriminate or charge more based on pre-existing conditions, just remember that those premiums are brought to you by companies who have an anti-trust exemption. Remember that the pseudo defenders of free markets never brought you exchanges and never placed healthcare on their agenda the way they did privatization of Social Security(image the damage to seniors from the recent financial debacle) and sending the elderly into the private health care insurance market as an alternative to Medicare or place enough money in a health savings account to cover their care when they’re 75, like the great brain surgeon, Dr. Ben Carson advocates.

Obama administration knew millions could not keep their health insurance – Investigations

Comments are closed.