Ministry of Solid Minerals Development clarifies N795Million "Website Update' Budget Controversy.

A Statement released and signed by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Solid Minerals Development, Mr. M.F. Istifanus said, "the attention of the Ministry has been drawn to social media reports concerning an aspect of the proposed 2016 budget line item of the Ministry with the description Website Update”.

He said, "concerned Nigerians have taken to the social media to lament on the alleged ill-prepared 2016 national budget of the All Progressives Congress-led administration of President Muhammadu Buhari".
 
"Attention seems to have been shifted from the missing budget from the coffers of the senate as well as the duplication of the said budget with conflicting details. It has moved to the recent discovery that the Ministry of Solid Minerals under the leadership of the former governor of Ekiti state, Kayode Fayemi will be spending a whooping sum of N795, 234.275 million on the upgrade of the ministry’s official website".
 
"Social media influencer and journalist, Kayode Ogundamisi who is based in the United Kingdom took to Twitter to publicize the anomalies in the national budget and slammed the Federal Government for allocating such an amount to a trivial operation that may not cost up to N2 million in the hands of innovative Nigerian youths who are Information Technology experts".
 
"The issue of over allocation and wastage of government is not new to the political actors of this current administration. Former Governor of Lagos state, Babatunde Raji Fashola who is currently the Minister of Power, Works and Housing during his tenure in the commercial capital of Nigeria, built a personal website for N78m and also two boreholes for a sum of N139 million which all went unquestioned".
 
"The former Gov. Fayemi during his tenure in Ekiti also allegedly built a government house for N3.3 billion which is today not a tourist centre. Strong reports also had it that he purchased two beds in the edifice for N50 million".


"The Ministry has been inundated with requests from well-meaning Nigerians seeking clarifications on the N795,234,275.00 purportedly budgeted for the website update".
"In preparation for the 2016 budget, a clear gap highlighted in the work of the Ministry was the need to improve the IT infrastructure and adopt appropriate technology to automate the operations of the Ministry and its agencies".
He further said, "a number of activities were conceived by the Ministry to address these gaps. These include the acquisition of adequate ICT infrastructure to ensure all required data and business processes are efficiently, effectively and transparently handled. It also involves automation and management of the mining rights/titles with on-line application processing, status tracking and open section for verification of valid mining licenses".
"This is to be done through the deployment of an Enterprise Resource Planning Solution across the 10 agencies and 12 departments under the Ministry".
"These were submitted to the Budget Office, which summarized it as “WEBSITE UPDATE” which is only a tiny component of the project. This is an error of description. The budget line was intended to address the overall ICT infrastructure improvement in the Ministry and its agencies".

Burkina Faso attack: Operation to end siege under way

Over 20 people are killed and an unknown number of hostages taken in an attack on a restaurant and hotel in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.

Security forces in the early hours of Saturday began an assault to reclaim the Splendid Hotel and entered its lobby, part of which was on fire, witnesses said.

At least 33 hostages, including a government minister, were freed from the besieged hotel, the country's communications minister told Reuters news agency, but other sources said at least 63 hostages have been rescued.

Diallo Ismael, a human rights activist, said that about 300 people could be inside the hotel popular with foreigners.

"The security forces are close to storming the building," Ismael told Al Jazeera from Ouagadougou.

The interior ministry said that fire brigade has found around 10 bodies on terrace of restaurant opposite the hotel.

French forces also arrived in Ouagadougou from neighbouring Mali to aid the effort, Associated Press news agency reported.

The director of the capital city's university hospital said they were treating 15 people, some with bullet wounds.

Earlier, Olympia de Maismont, a local reporter, told Al Jazeera that police confirmed that there were hostages in the Splendid Hotel, and she said the military had surrounded the building following reports of gunfire and explosions.

The attack, she added, happened around 8pm local time on Friday.

Reuters reported that gunmen stormed the hotel, burning cars outside and firing in the air to drive back crowds before security forces arrived, prompting an intense exchange of gunfire.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for the attack, SITE Intelligence Group, a monitoring organisation, reported.

Splendid Hotel, a four-star residence which is near the airport, is known to be popular with foreigners, including UN staff.

This is the first time gunmen have carried out an assault in the capital of Burkina Faso.

In November, gunmen stormed the Radisson Blu hotel in the Malian capital, Bamako, and took at least 170 people hostage. 

After a nine-hour standoff with Malian and UN soldiers, most of the hostages were released - but 19 were killed. Two attackers were also killed.

Burkina Faso elected Roch Marc Christian Kabore as its new president in a historic vote in November, becoming the West African country's first new leader in decades.

Kabore's win marked the end of a transitional period after the overthrow of the country's longtime ruler, Blaise Compaore, in 2014 and a failed coup attempt in September.

With Alja

How the bacteria in your gut may be shaping your waistline

A CALORIE is a calorie. Eat too many and spend too few, and you will become obese and sickly. This is the conventional wisdom. But increasingly, it looks too simplistic. All calories do not seem to be created equal, and the way the body processes the same calories may vary dramatically from one person to the next.

This is the intriguing suggestion from the latest research into metabolic syndrome, the nasty clique that includes high blood pressure, high blood sugar, unbalanced cholesterol and, of course, obesity. This uniquely modern scourge has swept across America, where obesity rates are notoriously high. But it is also doing damage from Mexico to South Africa and India, raising levels of disease and pushing up health costs.

Metabolic syndrome can still be blamed on eating too much and exercising too little. But it is crucial to understand why some foods are particularly harmful and why some people gain more weight than others. Thankfully, researchers are beginning to offer explanations in a series of recent papers.

One debate concerns the villainy of glucose, which is found in starches, and fructose, found in fruits, table sugar and, not surprisingly, high-fructose corn syrup. Diets with a high “glycaemic index”, raising glucose levels in the blood, seem to promote metabolic problems. David Ludwig of Boston Children’s Hospital has shown that those on a diet with a low glycaemic index experience metabolic changes that help them keep weight off, compared with those fed a low-fat diet. This challenges the notion that a calorie is a calorie. Others, however, blame fructose, which seems to promote obesity and insulin resistance. Now a study published in Nature Communications by Richard Johnson, of the University of Colorado, explains that glucose may do its harm, in part, through its conversion to fructose.

Dr Johnson and his colleagues administered a diet of water and glucose to three types of mice. One group acted as a control and two others lacked enzymes that help the body process fructose. The normal mice developed a fatty liver and became resistant to insulin. The others were protected. The body’s conversion of glucose to fructose, therefore, seems to help spur metabolic woes.

You are what you eat, maybe

Even more intriguing is the notion that the same diet may be treated differently by different people. Four recent papers explored this theme. In one, published in Science in July, Joseph Majzoub, also of Boston Children’s Hospital, deleted in mice a gene called Mrap2. Dr Majzoub and his colleagues showed that this helps to control appetite. Surprisingly, however, even when the mutant critters ate the same as normal mice, they still gained more weight. Why that is remains unclear, but it may be through Mrap2’s effect on another gene, called Mc4r, which is known to be involved in weight gain.

The second and third papers, published as a pair in Nature in August, looked at another way that different bodies metabolise the same diet. Both studies were overseen by Dusko Ehrlich of the National Institute of Agricultural Research in France. One examined bacteria in nearly 300 Danish participants and found those with more diverse microbiota in their gut showed fewer signs of metabolic syndrome, including obesity and insulin resistance. The other study put 49 overweight participants on a high-fibre diet. Those who began with fewer bacterial species saw an increase in bacterial diversity and an improvement in metabolic indicators. This was not the case for those who already had a diverse microbiome, even when fed the same diet.

Jeffrey Gordon, of Washington University in St Louis, says these two studies point to the importance of what he calls “job vacancies” in the microbiota of the obese. Fed the proper diet, a person with more vacancies may see the jobs filled by helpful bacteria. In the fourth paper, by Dr Gordon and recently published in Science, he explores this in mice. To control for the effects of genetics, Dr Gordon found four pairs of human twins, with one twin obese and the other lean. He collected their stool, then transferred the twins’ bacteria to sets of mice. Fed an identical diet, the mice with bacteria from an obese twin became obese, whereas mice with bacteria from a thin twin remained lean.

Dr Gordon then tested what would happen when mice with different bacteria were housed together—mouse droppings help to transfer bacteria. Bacteria from the lean mice made their way to the mice with the obese twin’s bacteria, preventing those mice from gaining weight and developing other metabolic abnormalities. But the phenomenon did not work in reverse, probably due to Dr Gordon’s theory on the microbiota’s job vacancies. Interestingly, the invasion did not occur, and obesity was not prevented, when the mice ate a diet high in fat and low in fruits and vegetables. The transfer of helpful bacteria therefore seems to depend on diet.

Dr Gordon hopes to be able to identify specific bacteria that might, eventually, be isolated and used as a treatment for obesity. For now, however, he and other researchers are exposing a complex interplay of factors.

One type of calorie may be metabolised differently than another. But the effect of a particular diet depends on a person’s genes and bacteria. And that person’s bacteria are determined in part by his diet. Metabolic syndrome, it seems, hinges on an intricate relationship between food, bacteria and genetics. Understand it, and researchers will illuminate one of modernity’s most common ailments.

With The Economists

Bill Cosby's 2005 deposition shouldn't be allowed in rape case, former prosecutor claims

                         VIEW PRESS/© VIEW PRESS/CORBIS

A former district attorney in Pennsylvania warned in an email last year that Bill Cosby’s lurid 2005 deposition in a civil case couldn’t be used as the basis for a criminal case against the disgraced comedian — a claim countered by the current prosecutors, according to reports.

In the email, obtained by CNN, former Montgomery County district attorney Bruce Castor told his successor that a verbal agreement that led to Cosby’s testimony in a 2005 civil sexual assault case would disqualify the disturbing tale Cosby told as evidence.

“I can see no possibility that Cosby's deposition could be used in a state criminal case, because I would have to testify as to what happened, and the deposition would be subject to suppression,” Castor wrote to then-DA Risa Vetri Ferman. “I cannot believe any state court judge would allow that deposition into evidence.”

The current district attorney argued that Castor’s claim is bogus.

“There is a specific legal method to grant immunity. That was not done in 2005,” current district attorney, Kevin Steele, who was elected in November partially on the promise he would prosecute Cosby, told CNN Friday.

Criminal charges were announced against Cosby last month, just weeks before the statute of limitations ran out, by Steele.

Cosby was charged with sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, a Temple University employee, at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004.

Constand filed her civil suit against Cosby and settled out of court the following year.

In the civil deposition, Cosby said under oath that he gave Constand halved pills that he described as “three friends to make (her) relax,” according to the affidavit.

He also acknowledged under oath that he obtained seven prescriptions in his own name for Quaaludes for the purpose of having sex with women.

The deposition is considered a key piece of evidence, cited by prosecutors as the impetus for reopening the case.

The charges mark the first criminal prosecution of the diminishing star and sets the stage for what could be a blockbuster trial involving some of the roughly 60 other accusers who say they were sexually assaulted by Cosby.

The 78-year-old was released on $1 million bail and faces up to a decade behind bars if convicted.

In a statement Monday, Cosby’s attorneys claimed that the charges against the former funnyman were “illegally, improperly and unethically brought by District Attorney Kevin Steele and his office.”

According to the statement, the charges “violate an express agreement made by the Montgomery County District Attorney in 2005, in which the Commonwealth agreed that Mr. Cosby would never be prosecuted with respect to the allegations of sexual assault made by complainant Andrea Constand.”

See How To Read A WhatsApp Message Without The Sender Knowing

                   Image credit: WhatsApp

The trouble with read messages on WhatsApp is that they are immediately marked with tiny blue ticks that let the sender know that they’ve been seen.

That’s great, unless the person receiving the message isn’t ready to reply straight away and doesn’t want the sender to know that they’re (temporarily) ignoring them.

To avoid any accusations of a snub, there’s a sneaky trick to avoid this so that WhatsApp users can read their messages when they’re good and ready with no fear of a social backlash.

All users need to do when they want to secretly read a WhatsApp message is to avoid opening it straight away and instead turn on Airplane Mode in their smartphone settings.

Once this is turned on, they can head back to WhatsApp and read the message without the little blue ticks appearing.

After the message has been read, the WhatsApp should be closed fully and the Airplane Mode turned back off in the settings, leaving the sender blissfully unaware that their message has been read.

With Libby Plummer