President Goodluck Jonathan today ordered the suspension of Nigeria's Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, weeks after the CBN Governor exposed the theft of at least $20 billion by officials of Nigerian petroleum ministry. This was made available via the twitter handle of Reuben Abati, Special Adviser to the Presidency on Media and Publicity.
A man who thought he was getting a tattoo of a Chinese symbol on his back was in fact being inked with a penis.
The cruel prank in Queensland, Australia, cost a backyard tattoo artist and his assistant jail time and left the victim a broken man.
On Friday Christopher William Lord, 23, was sentenced in Ipswich District Court after pleading guilty to assault occasioning bodily harm while armed and in company. He was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment with a parole release date of March 12.
While the three men were drinking, Brady and Lord convinced the victim to let Brady tattoo him.
Agreeing to have a yin yang symbol with a dragon and tiger tattooed on his back, Brady and Lord took him into a bedroom to do the tattoo.
Lord further encouraged the man to go through with the tattoo, telling him about a girl who would have sex with him if he had it done.
Starting the tattoo, Brady's design was wildly different from what they agreed on, drawing a penis, testicles and a misspelled slogan under it implying the man was gay.
After complaining the tattooing had hurt, the victim asked Brady to stop, but he continued, with Lord insisting the tattoo looked 'mad' and reassuring him that Brady was starting to draw the dragon after finishing the ying yang symbol.
When the tattoo was finished, Lord told the victim to cover the tattoo.The victim showed the tattoo to friends, who told him it was a drawing of a penis.
Ipswich Detective Constable Paul Malcolm said
. 'The victim wasn't interested (in a tattoo) at first but he was talked into it and he said he wanted a yin and yang symbol with some dragons,'The bloke started doing the tattoo and there was another bloke standing there watching saying, "Mate, it's looking really good".'
'He was told not to go out into the sun and not to show anyone for a few weeks. When he got home he showed it to the person he lives with and she said: "I don't think it's the tattoo you were after"
Sydney morning herald
Swoonsome actor Robert Pattinson will break a lot of hearts if the latest rumour about retiring from the acting trade are true. New reports suggest that the Twilight hunk plans to quit life on the silver screen, after a friend revealed that Rob "can't stand being famous".
Fans of Edward Cullen actor, Robert Pattinson might want to look away now, as a friend of R-Patz has anonymously told the media that the 27-year-old could quit the fame game altogether, after becoming sick and tired of sacrificing his personal life for his success.
Following his on-again-off-again girlfriend and Twilight co-star, Kristen Stewart cheating on him with director Rupert Sanders whilst filming Snow White and the Huntsman in 2012, it seems like Robert can't take anymore scrutiny over his love life.
A source close to Pattinson told Radar Online: “The cost of fame is the thing he and Kristen used to complain about all day and that hasn’t changed at all.
“Rob really can’t stand being famous, even though he loves his job," they continued.
“I’m sure all the hell he went through with Kristen was the final straw for him as far as fame is concerned.”
The Brit born star won't be traveling too far away from the lens though. If reports are to be believed, R-Patz plans to take more of an interest behind the camera, perhaps as a director.
According to a source who told HollywoodLife: “Rob is looking at a whole new approach to his future and is even considering going to theater school to focus more on getting behind the camera.”
The insider then added: “Rob’s been talking to a lot of independent film makers, and the last thing he wants to do is act in another blockbuster. He would like to direct a movie one day."
There have also been plenty of hints that English hottie could become a singer. Back in August a friend exclusively told HollywoodLife that Robert has plans to launch a music career, saying: "Rob’s number one priority right now is his career, in particular music. He’s heavily invested in his music career and it will only be a matter of time that he has a number one hit on his hands."
Music superstar Rihanna has insisted she never wanted to be famous.
The Umbrella hitmaker found stardom early in her life, signing her first record deal with Def Jam at the age of 17.
Now Rihanna, who turns 26 on Thursday (20Feb14), has revealed that becoming an internationally recognised celebrity was never one of her life goals - all she cared about was the music.
She tells Vogue magazine, "I did sing a lot as a child. A lot. I practiced hard to manoeuvre my voice. I love singing. I love it, and it doesn't feel like a chore. It's an expression.
"I never wanted to be famous. I just wanted my music to be heard all over the world. Then it happened and the fame came with it. I can't ever imagine feeling used to it."
Presidential aide Reuben Abati has announced appointment of a new Chief of Staff by President Jonathan a week after his former Chief of Staff, Mike Oghiadome resigned.
He is Brig Gen. Oladehinde Arogbofa
The new Chief of Staff to the President was born on Nov. 10, 1952. He hails from the Akoko South West Local Government Area of Ondo State.
Robot army 'to help future floods'
By Jane Wakefield
Self-organising robots that mimic insect colonies have been shown off by computer scientists at Harvard University.
The robot construction crews could in future be used to help alleviate flooding, building up walls of sandbags or as the construction crew of choice for future building on Mars.
Unlike human construction crews, there is no foreman or central control unit.
Neither is there any need for the robots to communicate with each other.
Dubbed Termes after the termites that build mounds of soil to act as lungs for their underground nests, the robots can build towers and pyramids out of blocks, even constructing their own staircases to reach higher levels.
The team behind the robots, from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, have taken their inspiration from termite colonies, which demonstrate swarm-like intelligence.
"The key inspiration we took from the termites is the idea that you can do something really complicated as a group without a supervisor, and secondly that you can do it without everybody discussing explicitly what's going on, but just by modifying the environment," said principal investigator Radhika Nagpal, professor of computer science at Harvard SEAS.
Termites rely on a concept known as stigmergy, a kind of implicit communication in which insects observe each others' changes to the environment and act accordingly.
Breakthrough
The robots were designed to do the same. Each robots does its job in parallel with others, but without knowing who else is working at the same time.
It was very different to human construction teams, said lead author Justin Werfel.
"Normally, at the beginning, you have a blueprint and a detailed plan of how to execute it, and the foreman goes out and directs his crew, supervising them as they do it," he said.
"In insect colonies, it's not as if the queen is giving them all individual instructions. Each termite doesn't know what the others are doing or what the current overall state of the mound is."
Currently robotic systems tend to rely either on a central controller that can see the whole process or on all of the robots being able to talk to each other frequently.
The issue with such a system is that if the central controller fails, that will bring down the whole system.
"It may be that in the end you want something in-between the centralised and decentralised system - but we've proven the extreme end of the scale - that it could be just like the termites," said Prof Nagpal.
"And from the termites' point of view, it's working out great."
Prof David Burns, from Aberystwyth university's department of computer science, thinks the robots could represent a breakthrough.
"We have had co-operating robots working in the 2D environment for some time now but for robots to be able to work in the 3D environment, to be able to build things up, is an important step towards the goal of utilising such robots in areas such as construction," he said.
"How do termites produce cathedral-like structures without co-operation? To have a robotic colony acting in a similar way would be a move away from the classic hierarchical structures we used today," he added
The results of the four-year Termes project are published in Science.
A Russian man who tried to rob a hair salon ended up as the victim when the female shop owner overpowered him, tied him up naked and then used him as a sex slave for three days.
Viktor Jasinski, 32, admitted to police that he had gone to the salon in Meshchovsk, Russia, with the intention of robbing it.
But the tables were turned dramatically when he found himself overcome by owner Olga Zajac, 28, who happened to be a black belt in karate.
She allegedly floored the would-be robber with a single kick.
Then, in a scene reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, police say Zajac dragged the semi-conscious Jasinski to a back room of the salon and tied him up with a hair dryer cable.
She allegedly stripped him naked and, for the next three days, used him as a sex slave to 'teach him a lesson' - force feeding him Viagra to keep the lesson going.
The would-be robber was eventually released, with Zajak saying he had learned his lesson.
Jasinski went straight to the police and told them of his back-room ordeal, saying that he had been held hostage, handcuffed naked to a radiator, and fed nothing but Viagra.
Both have now been arrested.
When police arrived to question Zahjac, she said: 'What a bastard. Yes, we had sex a couple of times. But I bought him new jeans, gave him food and even gave him 1,000 roubles when he left."..
