Alleged Boko Haram Sponsor Modu Sheriff Storms Mauduguri With 200-Soldier Protection

Ali Modu Sheriff, the former governor of Borno State who is alleged to be funding the violent Boko Haram militancy in the Northeast, arrived in the state capital today with over 200 soldiers in his convoy.

                                                       Former Governor of Borno State, Ali Modu Sheriff

 He was in town to pay a condolence visit on a friend who lost his mother.

Mr. Sheriff ignited a political firestorm only last week when he showed up in meetings in Chad with President Goodluck Jonathan and his Chadian counterpart, Idris Derby.

That revelation brought the Nigerian president under a serious political backlash. The public outcry forced Mr. Jonathan to declare publicly he will not interfere with the investigation of Mr. Sheriff by the State Security Services.

Mr. Sheriff’s foray into Maiduguri in stunning force late following his arrival on a private jet shocked residents who were suddenly swamped by a massive convoy of soldiers, making many to speculate that the Chief of Defense Staff, Alex bade, was in town.

Mr. Sheriff made the even more astonishing announcement to close pals that he was merely visiting an associate, Kassim Imam, who lost his mother a few days ago.

Analysts say Mr. Sheriff’s possession and open demonstration of such lavish federal force and protection reopens the question as to his real relationship with Mr. Jonathan, and the future of any investigation of the sponsors of Boko Haram.

Some Maiduguri residents and political observers expressed surprise about Mr. Sheriff’s huge convoy in view of Mr. Jonathan’s denials. They wondered why 200 soldiers that should be fighting against Boko Haram, the sect Sheriff is allegedly funding, should instead be protecting him.

Efforts to obtain comments from presidential spokesman Reuben Abati, who issued a statement denying that Mr. Sheriff was in Chad with Mr. Jonathan, met with failure. 

Sources;sahara reporters

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Atiku Abubakar To Officially Declare Presidential Ambition September 24

Atiku Abubakar To Officially Declare Presidential Ambition September 24

Barring any last minute change of mind, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar will on September 24, 2014 formally declare his intention to contest the 2015 presidential election on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Premium Times reports.

When he finally declares his intention, it would be the fourth time the former vice president has shown interest in the nation’s highest office. The presidential election holds February 14, 2015.

Do you guys find this interesting ? please share your thoughts below.

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BREAKING NEWS! Big Brother Africa House Burns, Show Postponed

 Big Brother Africa House Burns, Show Postponed



The Big Brother Africa Hotshots show was scheduled to begin on Sunday, September 7, 2014 but has now been postponed indefinitely..



Big Brother Africa Hotshots will not start on Sunday as planned due to a fire incident in the BBA house.

The show was due to start on September 7 at the Sesani Studios in Johannesburg, South Africa but has now been suspended indefinitely.

According to an M-Net press release

“M-Net and Endemol SA advise that due to a devastating fire at the Big Brother house on 2 September 2014, Big Brother Hotshots will not launch this Sunday (7 September) as scheduled. The cause of the fire at this stage is unknown and investigations will commence as soon as it is safe to do so.”

At this stage M-Net and Endemol are urgently looking for an alternative Big Brother house in which to film the production, however as this production has highly technical infrastructure, camera and edit requirements an alternative is not immediately available.

Every effort will be made to find a solution as quickly as possible to ensure that Africa’s biggest reality show will continue.”

There were no casualties recorded from the incident.

sources;naijaloaded.com

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Japan Develops 30-Minute Ebola Detector

Following the upsurge in the outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease, EVD, in West Africa, Japanese researchers say they have developed a new method to detect the presence of the deadly disease in 30 minutes.

According to Professor Jiro Yasuda and his team at Nagasaki University, the new technology they developed could allow doctors to quickly diagnose infection of the Ebola virus.


                                               Representational image

The team also stated that their process is also cheaper than the system currently in use in West Africa where the virus has already killed more than 1552 people, according to the World Health Organisation, WHO.

“The new method is simpler than the current one and can be used in countries where expensive testing equipment is not available,” Yasuda told AFP by telephone.

“We have yet to receive any questions or requests, but we are pleased to offer the system, which is ready to go,” he said.

Yasuda said the team had developed what he called a “primer”, which amplifies only those genes specific to the Ebola virus found in a blood sample or other bodily fluid.

Using existing techniques, ribonucleic acid (RNA) – biological molecules used in the coding of genes – is extracted from any viruses present in a blood sample.

This is then used to synthesise the viral DNA, which can be mixed with the primers and then heated to 60C to 65C.

If Ebola is present, DNA specific to the virus is amplified in 30 minutes because of the action of the primers. The by-products from the process cause the liquid to become cloudy, providing visual confirmation, Yasuda said.

It was gathered that a method called polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, is currently widely used to detect the Ebola virus, which requires doctors to heat and cool samples repeatedly and takes up to two hours.

“The new method only needs a small, battery-powered warmer and the entire system costs just tens of thousands of yen (hundreds of dollars), which developing countries should be able to afford,” he added.

No fewer than five countries in West Africa have confirmed cases of Ebola virus within their territories- Nigeria, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Senegal.

In Nigeria alone, six people have died from the dreaded disease since a Liberian businessman, Patrick Sawyer, brought the disease to Lagos on 20 July, 2014.

With more cases of the Ebola virus disease being reported in the country and suspected patients having to wait for days to confirm their status, maybe the new technology would help to reduce the waiting period.

sources;talkofnaija.com

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Sony PlayStation Network and other game services attacked

Sony's PlayStation Network was forced offline for much of Sunday by a cyber-attack in what appears to be a campaign against several online gaming services. Microsoft's XBox Live, Blizzard's Battle.net, and Grinding Gear Games are among others to have reported being disrupted over the weekend. The attacks coincided with a bomb scare involving a flight carrying a Sony executive. An American Airlines jet was diverted after a threat was made online. A warning that the flight - from Dallas-Fort Worth to San Diego - was carrying explosives was subsequently repeated by a Twitter account that had been used to claim responsibility for the online attacks. John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, had been tweeting about his firm's efforts to combat a "large scale DDoS" before posting a message saying he was about to board the plane. DDoS stands for distributed denial of service attack - a technique in which many computers are used to flood an online service with requests in an attempt to overload its systems.

After the threatened plane landed in Phoenix, Arizona, Mr Smedley tweeted: "Yes, my plane was diverted. Not going to discuss more than that. Justice will find these guys." A spokeswoman for Sony said that the FBI was now investigating the diversion. However, the Bureau has yet to issue a statement of its own. Jihadist links A Twitter account that has claimed responsibility for attacking Sony and the other video games firms has linked the attacks to the jihadist group Islamic State, posting: "Kuffar [non-muslims] don't get to play videogames until bombing of the ISIL stops." It also makes several references to Isis - the former name used by the Islamic militants. But it is unclear whether this is a diversionary tactic, since an earlier post by the same account states: "Sony, yet another large company, but they aren't spending the waves of cash they obtain on their customers' PSN service. End the greed." To complicate matters another hacker, who is associated with the Anonymous hacking collective, has claimed responsibility for the DDoS on the PlayStation Network, saying they mounted it to highlight vulnerabilities in Sony's system. This hacker has criticised the other claims of responsibility and posted screenshots that purport to support their case. Xbox disruption Sony's PlayStation Network was notably taken offline for more than three weeks in 2011 after a hack attack that compromised its members' personal details and exposed their encrypted debit and credit card accounts. However, the firm's social media manager has sought to reassure subscribers about the latest attack. "We have seen no evidence of any intrusion to the network and no evidence of any unauthorized access to users' personal information," Sid Shuman blogged.

"In light of today's issue, the networks will not undergo the regularly scheduled maintenance, which was planned for Monday, August 25. "We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused by this issue." Microsoft declined to "comment on the root cause" of disruption its rival Xbox Live online gaming service has faced. However, a message on is support site stated that Xbox One owners were experiencing "server unavailability issues" when trying to join other players in online games. The webpage also mentions problems faced by owners of the Xbox 360 trying to connect to Diablo III's party chat feature . This appears to be a consequence of an attack on Activision Blizzard's gaming service Battle.net, which also supports World of Warcraft and Starcraft titles. "Battle.net game services have recently been subject to DDoS attacks. We worked diligently along with our ISPs [internet service providers] to improve the situation and currently are seeing more stability," said a message posted to the facility's site.

Meanwhile, Grinding Gear Games posted a message on the Twitter account of its game Path of Exile on Sunday, saying: "We're having some server issues due to a DDoS attack. Should have it sorted out soon. Sorry for the inconvenience!" The incidents follow reports of earlier DDoS attacks on other multiplayer titles on Friday, including Eve Online, League of Legends, RuneScape and Guild Wars 2.

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TRICKS: LEARN TO GET 700 FREE MB ON MTN SIMCARD

Follow the below steps to get free 700MB from your MTN sim.

• Dial *662*6# and subscribe for all the plan you see there i.e from jumia to easy taxy (monthly trial) each monthly trial you subscribe to gives you 100mb and they are 7 in number, giving you 700MB in total.
• The 700mb can only work with this site www.jumia.com.ng, Meaning that aside of the above site, it won’t work.
• So if you already have Simple server, open it or download it HERE
• Same thing goes with openvpn or download th HERE and config file HERE
•  Open it and replace anywhere you see 0.facebook.com or blackberry.com with jumia.com

For PC users, download SimpleServer.exe or follow this link HERE to set it download; and set your browser to manual proxy to 127.0.0.1 port 8080 (don’t forget to replace anywhere you see 0.facebook.com with jumia.com)

Finally, this 700mb will only allow you once for a life time since its trial;

so if you have more sims, keep repeating the same process to keep enjoying free 700MB.

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TECH: Sony Launches UZ Series UHS-1 U3 SD Cards in India With 95MB/s Read Speed

Sony India on Tuesday has launched two new Ultra High Speed SD cards for photographers and videographers in its new UZ Series. The UZ Series of SD cards are available in 32GB (SDHC) and 64GB (SDXC) storage capacities, priced at Rs. 5,339 and Rs. 9,942 respectively. Sony has announced that both the cards are already available across all Sony Center outlets and major electronic stores across India. The new ultra high speed SD cards come with data transfer speeds of 95MB per second (read) and 90MB per second (write). It also comes with UHS-1 Speed Class 3 rating, which according to Sony will result in fast data transfer speed, quality images captured and 'smooth 4K recordings as well as minimal buffering when capturing still images in Burst, multi-frame or panoramic modes.' The cards also include Sony's File Rescue software, which according to company is the first in the world to support 3D movies and photos. It allows users to recover previously deleted data too. Sony also claims that the UZ Series of SD cards are protected with moulded resin, making them 'remarkably durable, shockproof and resilient to extreme temperatures.' In May, SanDisk launched its Ultra microSDXC UHS-1 128GB memory card in India at Rs. 9,999, which was first introduced during MWC. The company had also claimed that it is the world's "highest capacity microSDXC memory card" with 128GB storage and is said to be designed for Android-powered smartphones and tablets. The new 128GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I memory card can, according SanDisk, store up to 16 hours of full-HD videos, a total of 7,500 songs, 3200 images and over 125 apps. Further, the company details that the new cards can read data at speeds up to 30MB/s for quick file transfer, apart from being waterproof and temperature proof.

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