At least 22 killed in suicide attack at Ariana Grande concert in Britain

 At least 22 people, including some children, were killed and 59 wounded when a suicide bomber struck as thousands of fans streamed out of a concert by U.S. singer Ariana Grande in the English city of Manchester on Monday.Prime Minister Theresa May said the incident was being treated as a terrorist attack, making it the deadliest militant assault in Britain since four British Muslims killed 52 people in suicide bombings on London's transport system in July 2005.
Police said the attacker detonated the explosives shortly after 10:33 pm (2133 GMT) at Manchester Arena, which has the capacity to hold 21,000 people. Children were among the dead, police said.
"We believe, at this stage, the attack last night was conducted by one man," Manchester Chief Constable Ian Hopkins told reporters. "The priority is to establish whether he was acting alone or as part of a network.

"We believe the attacker was carrying an improvised explosive device which he detonated causing this atrocity," said Hopkins, who declined to answer questions about whether the attacker was British.
A witness who attended the concert said she felt a huge blast as she was leaving the arena, followed by screaming and a rush by thousands of people trying to escape the building.
A video posted on Twitter showed fans, many of them young, screaming and running from the venue. Dozens of parents frantically searched for their children, posting photos and pleading for information on social media.

IS claims responsibility for London attack

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The Islamic State group says the attack outside the British parliament in London was carried out by one of its "soldiers."
The IS-linked Aamaq news agency said Thursday that the person who carried out the "attack in front of the British parliament in London was a soldier of the Islamic State."
It added that the person "carried out the operation in response to calls for targeting citizens of the coalition."
IS has called on its supporters to carry out attacks against citizens of the U.S.-led coalition that has been targeting the group since 2014.
IS, who have been responsible for numerous bloody attacks around the globe, have also previously claimed certain attacks in a show of opportunism. Britain's government has not identified the suspect.

Robots could wear flesh to help form transplants

  Right now, you have to grow human transplants in a stationary environment. That's more than a little dangerous when they could buckle under the stresses of a real body. Oxford University may have a clever (if slightly ghastly) solution to that problem: have robots wear the tissue first. If you grow muscles on humanoid robots, the movement and overall shape of those machines would lead to grafts and transplants that are ready for serious strain.

Mysterious jellyfish spotted in ocean depths

  An ethereal, ‘cosmic’ jellyfish was spotted in some of the deepest reaches of the ocean, hovering near a previously unexplored seamount.
The luminous sea creature, which may be a completely new species, was spotted by a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) roughly 9,800 feet below sea level in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean near American Samoa. The creature was discovered at the previously unexplored seamount, called Utu Seamount, by the members of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) 2017 American Samoa Expedition.
After the dive, Allen Collins, an invertebrate zoologist with NOAA’s National Systematics Lab, initially identified the creature as Benthocodon hyalinus. Still, there’s a possibility that the jellyfish could be a species previously unknown to science, Collins said.

Alleged N2.2bn fraud: FG withdraws charges against Supreme Court Registrar, others

The Federal Government on Tuesday withdrew without giving reasons, the corruption charges it filed against the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court, Mr. Ahmed Saleh, and two other employees of the apex court.
The charges were filed before a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory in Jabi, Abuja barely three months ago, following the raid on the Supreme Court complex and homes of some judges, including two of the apex court, between October 7 and 8, 2016.
The Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation had filed the charges against Saleh, Muhammed Abdulrahman Sharif and Rilwanu Lawal on November 3, 2016.

The prosecution in the case marked, FCT/HC/CR/13/2016, accused the defendants of receiving gratifications totalling N74.4m from private contractors providing services to the Supreme Court between 2009 and 2016.

Russia banned from London World Championships – IAAF

Russia will miss August’s World Athletics Championships in London after their doping ban was extended on Monday, world governing body president Sebastian Coe said.

Coe said Russia, whose 15-month ban from athletics was prolonged at the IAAF’s Council meeting in Cap d’Ail near Monaco, could not be reintegrated into the sport before November.
Double Olympic 1500-metre champion Coe was speaking after the IAAF Council approved the Taskforce’s recommendation that Russia was “not ready for reinstatement”.
Russia has been barred from international competition since November 2015 following a damaging report alleging that state-sponsored doping was rife in the country.
The ban had already been extended in March and then June 2016, preventing Russia’s athletes from competing at the Rio Olympics.

For the sake of national security, Donald Trump needs to trade in his cellphone

© Provided by Vox Media, Inc. The question of what phone a president carries — and what he or she does with it — is a serious matter of national security.
Take a president who likes to make policy announcements on Twitter at three in the morning and the matter becomes even more urgent.
After all, when Donald Trump tweets, the stock market shifts. If someone were to read what he was preparing to tweet by breaking into his smartphone and using keylogging software, even with just a 30-second head start, it could make some people very rich and potentially cause serious damage to the national economy.

Cheers and ceremony: Trump sweeps in for his big day

Ready for his big moment, Donald Trump swept into Washington on a military jet Thursday for three days of inaugural festivities and quickly set about building better ties to the Republican Congress. Washington braced for an onslaught of crowds and demonstrators — with all the attendant hoopla and hand-wringing. Trump began taking on more trappings of the presidency, giving a salute to the Air Force officer who welcomed him as he stepped off a U.S. jet with wife Melania at Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington. Later, he placed a ceremonial wreath at Arlington National Cemetery.
His first stop was a luncheon in a ballroom at his own hotel, where he gave a shout-out to GOP congressional leaders, declaring: "I just want to let the world know we're doing very well together." House Speaker Paul Ryan, he said, will finally have someone to sign legislation into law. Then Trump veered into the territory of the unknowable to boast his Cabinet selections had "by far the highest IQ of any Cabinet ever."

Mexico extradites top drug lord 'El Chapo' to U.S.

  Notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has been extradited from a prison in northern Mexico to the United States, the Mexican government said on Thursday, one day before Donald Trump assumes the U.S. presidency.
Guzman was one of the world's most wanted drug kingpins until he was captured in January 2016. Six months earlier, he had broken out of a high-security penitentiary in central Mexico through a mile-long tunnel.

Forceful and tearful, Obama says goodbye in emotional speech

 Conceding disappointments during his presidency yet offering vigorous encouragement for the nation's future, Barack Obama issued an emotional defense Tuesday night of his vision to Americans facing a moment of anxiety and a dramatic change in leadership.

Obama's valedictory speech in his hometown of Chicago was a public meditation on the trials and triumphs, promises kept and promises broken that made up his eight years in the White House. Arguing his faith in America had been confirmed, Obama said he ends his tenure inspired by America's "boundless capacity" for reinvention, and he declared: "The future should be ours."
His delivery was forceful for most of his speech, but by the end he was wiping away tears as the crowd embraced him one last time.

Trump Received Unsubstantiated Report That Russia Had Damaging Information About Him

 The chiefs of America’s intelligence agencies last week presented President Obama and President-elect Donald J. Trump with a summary of unsubstantiated reports that Russia had collected compromising and salacious personal information about Mr. Trump, two officials with knowledge of the briefing said.
The summary is based on memos generated by political operatives seeking to derail Mr. Trump’s candidacy. Details of the reports began circulating in the fall and were widely known among journalists and politicians in Washington.

Ambode may drop commissioners

The Lagos State Governor, Akinkunmi Ambode, is expected to drop about five commissioners in an impending cabinet change.

There were rumours on Saturday that five commissioners had resigned, but NEWS  sources in the Lagos State Government House said this was not true.

The sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, however said Governor Ambode was not happy with the performance and attitude of some of his commissioners and that he had made up his mind to change them.

Nigeria’s oil exports face fresh disruption

The nation’s crude oil production and export have hit a fresh snag following the shutdown of the Trans Niger Pipeline, one of two major pipelines transporting the Bonny Light crude grade for export.

The TNP, which is operated by Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited, was shut by the oil major after a fire at Kpor in Ogoniland, which may worsen the country’s output due to unplanned disruptions.

According to a report on Shell’s website, the pipeline transports around 180,000 barrels of crude oil per day to the Bonny Export Terminal and is part of the gas liquids evacuation infrastructure, critical for continued domestic power generation (Afam VI power plant) and liquefied gas exports.

How a week of tweets by Trump stoked anxiety, moved markets and altered plans

The threat arrived before dawn.
From his glimmering Manhattan tower, President-elect Donald Trump launched a 7:30 a.m. missive to his 18.9 million Twitter followers: “General Motors is sending Mexican made model of Chevy Cruze to U.S. car dealers-tax free across border. Make in U.S.A. or pay big border tax!”
Trump’s demand ricocheted across social media in some 18,000 retweets. Then came the fallout: Google searches about GM spiked by 200 percent. GM’s stock value declined by 24 cents to $34.60 a share. And at corporate headquarters in Detroit, GM executives sprang into action. They had a reputation to save — and facts to correct.
At 9:10 a.m. landed a statement from one of the world’s biggest corporations: “All Chevrolet Cruze sedans sold in the U.S. are built in GM’s assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio.” The automaker added that it assembles a hatchback Cruze model in Mexico but that it is for “global markets” and that only 4,500, or about 2 percent, were sold on American soil.
 

Trump’s criticism of intelligence on Russia is dividing Hill GOP

  Agency Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) speaks with U.S. service members on Jan. 2 on a visit to the NATO-Georgia Joint Training and Evaluation Center in Krtsanisi, outside Tbilisi, Georgia. President-elect Donald Trump’s broadside against the intelligence community is dividing Capitol Hill Republicans, with some ready to pounce on Trump’s skepticism that Russia interfered with the U.S. elections and others urging a more cautious approach.
The resulting schism could widen as Congress begins probing the CIA’s charges that Russia intervened in the November elections to help Trump, potentially becoming one of the first significant intraparty breaches of the Trump presidency.
U.S. critics of Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, such as Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), want to go full-bore on holding Russia to account for its suspected election interference. But they may be slowed by GOP senators who prefer to wait to hear the intelligence community’s evidence and for Trump to be installed in the White House.

We put our school fees, project money in MMM, varsity students lament

The amount I invested in the MMM scheme was N100,000. I was expecting my 30 per cent profit when I got the news that our accounts have been suspended. It was a  bitter news. Being a student, the fund was raised to pay my school fees and to meet other basic needs. It is a great risk but many students enrolled in the scheme to make profit and to live a better life. If MMM crashes, I would accept it as my fate.  I will have to look for other ways to source my school fees. There is nothing I can do. I will only learn from it and not engage in such a scheme again.

— Ozadhe Russell, Civil Engineering department, LAUTECH, Ogbomoso

Photo: Muhammed, Abati, Obanikoro, Fani-Kayode in EFCC detention

From left: Former FCT Minister, Senator Bala Mohammed, former spokesman to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, Reuben Abati;  former Minister of State for Defense, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, former minister and spokesperson to Goodluck Jonathan Presidential Campaign, Femi Fani-Kayode and Bashir Ushaq Bashir while they were in EFCC detention in November 2016.

China to return seized U.S. drone, says Washington 'hyping up' incident

  The oceanographic survey ship, USNS Bowditch, is shown September 20, 2002, which deployed an underwater drone seized by a Chinese Navy warship in international waters in South China Sea, December 16… China will return an underwater U.S. drone seized by a naval vessel this week in the South China Sea, both countries said on Saturday, but Beijing complained that Washington had been "hyping up" the incident.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to take an aggressive approach in dealing with China over its economic and military policies, jumped on the unusual drone seizure with a pair of provocative tweets, accusing Beijing of stealing the equipment.

The drone, known as an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV), was taken on Thursday, the first seizure of its kind in recent memory. The Pentagon went public with its complaint after the action and said on Saturday it had secured a deal to get the drone back.

$400m Abacha loot: FG to pay Swiss govt $79m commission

The Federal Government may have agreed to pay the Government of Switzerland $79m (N25.2bn) as part of conditions for the repatriation of almost $400m (N128bn) recovered from the family of the

The Chairman of the Civil Society Network Against Corruption, Mr. Olanrewaju Suraj, said this during a seminar to commemorate the 2016 International Anti-Corruption Day in Abuja on Friday.

The event was jointly organised by Nigerian anti-corruption agencies, the European Union, the United States and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and had in attendance senior diplomats and politicians.

OAU first-class graduate announced dead on graduation day

Bibilari Elebuibon

There was an unusual silence at the 42nd convocation of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Osun State, on Friday when the death was announced of a first-class graduate, Bibilari Elebuibon.

Elebuibon, who was the best in Yoruba Language in the Faculty of Arts, was said to have died in an accident in Osogbo, the Osun State capital, in July 2016.

It became a harvest of tears among his colleagues and some others present when his name was called by the dean of his faculty, Prof. Gbemisola Adeoti, for a prize and the school’s Public Relations Officer, Mr. Abiodun Olanrewaju, stepped forward to call for a minute silence in his honour.