Donald Trump Praises Putin For Delaying Any Retaliation Against The US After Pres. Obama's Sanctions

Russian president Vladimir Putin has decided not to retaliate against the US for expelling 35 Russian diplomats and imposing sanctions on two of the country's intelligence agencies on Thursday. He made this statement after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the country planned to expel 35 U.S. diplomatic staff from Moscow and close two facilities used by the U.S. embassy in Russia.

The RIA news agency quoted Putin as saying that he would consider the actions of President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office next month, when deciding on further steps in Russia-U.S. relations. A move President-elect Trump approved.

He took to his Twitter account to Praise Putin for his decision, saying he was a smart man.


He then tweeted later in the day mocking CNN and NBC News.

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson Buys His Dad a Car for Christmas

The Sexiest Man Alive might also be the Best Son Alive.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson surprised his dad, former professional wrestler Rocky Johnson, with a new car for Christmas.

The Baywatch star posted a pic with his dad and the new ride on Instagram, but the sweetest thing about the post wasn’t the gift this time.

Describing his dad as a “minimalist” who “never asks me for much,” Johnson went on to tell an incredible and sad story from his dad’s past. “Crazy story, my dad’s dad died when he was 13yrs old. That Christmas, my dad’s mom had her new boyfriend over for Christmas dinner. Her boyfriend got drunk and pissed on the turkey,” Johnson revealed.

“My dad went outside, got a shovel, drew a line in the snow and said if you cross that line I’ll kill you. The drunk crossed it and my dad laid him out cold as a block of ice,” he continued.

When the cops arrived, Johnson said his mother was given an ultimatum: either her son stays, or the new boyfriend stays. “In front of the entire family, my dad’s mom looked at him and said get out. He was 13yrs old and now homeless.”

The incident happened in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada in 1954, according to Johnson, who wrote of his father, “He needed the bare minimum then, just like does now. I always think about that story and my dad having every odd stacked against him at 13, but he fought though it and still made something of himself.”

His dad’s toughness wasn’t always easy for Johnson to handle as a kid. When they trained together, he said his dad often told him, “If you’re gonna throw up, go outside. And if you’re gonna cry, then go home to your mother.”

While he said he “hated it” growing up, he now embraces the tough love. “Made a man outta me. Without pissing on my turkey,” he joked.

Benue PDP disowns Sheriff

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Benue State as well as the former governor of the state, Gabriel Suswam, have dismissed the inauguration of a parallel executive committee in the state by the factional chairman of party,  Ali Modu Sheriff, saying that Sheriff’s visit was to cement his relationship with the All Progressives Congress in the state.

In separate statements made available to journalists in Abuja,  the Benue State chapter of PDP and Suswam wondered how Sheriff could be working for the interest of PDP and yet visited Benue State without visiting the state secretariat of the party.

The PDP statement issued by the state chairman of the party,  John Ngbede, noted that for a governor who had refused to allow PDP access to public facilities in the state only to receive Senator Sheriff was an indication that Sheriff was not in the state in the interest of the PDP.

The statement reads: “We have observed with interest the visit to the state Friday by a former national chairman of the party, Senator Ali Modu Sherrif, during which he was received in solidarity by newly appointed Tor Sankera, Chief Abu King Shuluwa, and the state governor, Samuel Ortom, who extended to him compliments of state protocol and courtesy including official transport and security escort.

“Ironically, the same Governor Ortom has since assumption of office refused the PDP in the state use of public spaces for its functions, even including in May this year when the party was denied space to hold its state congress for the election and inauguration of its State Exco, yet he opened his arms wide to embrace Sherrif.

“Be it noted that no national leader of the PDP visiting the state on legitimate party business will completely shun the party’s state secretariat and prefer to consult with leaders of another political party as Sherrif did.

“It was an act of utmost political recklessness for functionaries of the APC-controlled Ortom administration in the state to be seen playing active part in the visit of Sherrif and taking up supposed positions on the purported arrangement of a Sherrif faction of the party.

“Subsisting court judgements have given legitimacy to the National Caretaker Committee of the PDP led by Senator Ahmed Makarfi as its highest leadership organ duly mandated and running the affairs of the party, with all statutory organs and members of the party at the national level and in the 36 states of the federation and the FCT Abuja, the 11 state governors on the platform of the party and the National Assembly Caucus all loyal to it.

Source: The Guardian

Brazilian police: Greek ambassador killed by wife's lover

Police in Brazil believe that Greece's ambassador to the country was killed by his wife's lover under her orders in a house in the Rio area and have detained three suspects, authorities said Friday.

Ambassador Kyriakos Amiridis went missing on Monday in Nova Iguacu, a city just north of Rio de Janeiro, where the ambassador had been vacationing. The couple lived most of the time in the capital of Brasilia.

On Friday, police investigator Evaristo Pontes Magalhaes said that 29-year-old police officer Sergio Gomes Moreira Filho had confessed to killing Amiridis, alleging self-defense.

He said the policeman was having an affair with the ambassador's 40-year-old wife, Francoise.

Filho's cousin, Eduardo de Melo, acknowledged taking part in the killing as a lookout, Magalhaes said. The cousin accused Francoise of offering him the equivalent of $25,000 to participate.

A judge ordered the detention of Francoise, her lover and his cousin, and the three were in custody.

Francoise has denied any role in the alleged plot. According to Magalhaes, Francoise said she couldn't stop Filho from killing her husband and insisted she was not at home at the time of the crime.

But the police investigator said in a press conference late Friday that the "evidence clearly puts the ambassador's wife as a co-author of the crime."

He said she started plotting with her lover to kill the ambassador after the couple had a serious fight three days before Christmas.

"All our evidence suggests that her motivation was to use the financial resources left by the ambassador so she could enjoy life with Sergio," the police officer, Magalhaes said.

The first signs the ambassador had been murdered emerged late Thursday, when police found blood spots believed to be his on a sofa inside the house the couple kept in Nova Iguacu, where the wife's family lives.

Filho told police that he strangled the ambassador during a fight, but the blood evidence found on the scene makes his claim unlikely, Magalhaes said. Neighbors said they did not hear any shots, leading police to believe the policeman stabbed Amiridis.

The investigation showed that Amiridis' body was removed from the house in a carpet at the same time that Francoise arrived with their 10 year-old daughter, who did not see the body of her dead father, Magalhaes said.

Police believe a body found in a burned-out car that Amiridis had rented on Dec. 21 belongs to the ambassador, but forensics experts are still working to confirm that it is him.

Brazil's government has offered its condolences to Greece over his death.

The Greek Embassy website in Brazil says Amiridis started his career as diplomat in 1985 in Athens and became Greece's top diplomat in Brazil in 2016.

He earlier was Greece's ambassador to Libya and worked as consul in Rio from 2001-2004.

Source:RIO DE JANEIRO (AP)

Britain, edging towards Trump, scolds Kerry over Israel

Britain scolded U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for describing the Israeli government as the most right-wing in Israeli history, a move that aligns Prime Minister Theresa May more closely with President-elect Donald Trump.

After U.S. President Barack Obama enraged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by refusing to veto a UN Security Council resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlement building, Kerry's public rebuke of Israel has unsettled some allies such as Britain.

Amid one of the United States' sharpest confrontations with Israel since the 1956 Suez crisis, Kerry said in a speech that Israel jeopardizeds hopes of peace in the Middle East by building settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

While Britain voted for the UN resolution that so angered Netanyahu and says that settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, a spokesman for May said that it was clear that the settlements were far from the only problem in the conflict.

In an unusually sharp public rebuke of Obama's top diplomat, May's spokesman said that Israel had coped for too long with the threat of terrorism and that focusing only on the settlements was not the best way to achieve peace between Jew and Arab.

London also took particular issue with Kerry's description of Netanyahu's coalition as "the most right-wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by its most extreme elements."

"We do not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically-elected government of an ally," May's spokesman said when asked about Kerry 70-minute speech in the State Department's auditorium.

The U.S. State Department said it was surprised by the remarks from May's office and said Kerry's comments were in line with Britain's own policy. It pointedly also thanked Germany, France, Canada, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates for support.

TRUMP AND MAY?

Britain has long cherished its so-called "special relationship" with the United States as a central pillar of its foreign policy, but May has struggled to build relations with Trump's transition team.

Following his election, Trump spoke to nine other world leaders before he spoke to May while he caused astonishment in London when he suggested that Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage should be Britain's ambassador to Washington.

By openly criticising Kerry, who will leave office in just weeks, May moves British policy closer to Trump than its other European allies such as Germany and France.

Trump has denounced the Obama administration's treatment of Israel and promised to change course when he is sworn in on Jan. 20.

"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but not anymore," Trump said in a series of tweets. "Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!"

Germany's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, has come out in favour of the Kerry speech while France holds a Middle East conference next month in Paris.

But Australia has distanced itself from Obama's stance on Israel, ABC reported.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he was convinced peace with Israel was achievable but demanded that Israel halt settlement building before talks restarted.

ISRAEL

Netanyahu has been witheringly critical of Kerry’s speech. In a statement released shortly after it was delivered, Netanyahu accused Kerry of bias and said Israel did not need to be lectured to by foreign leaders.

Netanyahu said he looked forward to working with Trump.

Kerry "obsessively dealt with settlements", Netanyahu said in his response, and barely touched "the root of the conflict – Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries."

In Israel, Kerry’s speech has played into the hands of Israel’s far-right national-religious movement, led by Naftali Bennett, the education minister, who is in Netanyahu’s cabinet but very critical of Netanyahu and is trying to position himself as a future potential leader.

Bennett’s party, Jewish Home, wants to annexe large parts of the West Bank and openly opposes the creation of a Palestinian state. He is advocating for more settlements and the legalisation of outpost settlements, which even the Israeli government considers illegal.

"This [Obama] administation's policy has left the Middle East up in flames," Bennett said after Kerry's speech. "The one free democracy has been thrown under the bus - and that's Israel."

Source:Reuters 

MUST READ: The Death Of Clintonism

In September 1963, two months before his death, John F. Kennedy mused aloud to his old friend the journalist Charles Bartlett about the prospects for the 1968 presidential election, in which, he presciently worried, his brother Robert might run against Lyndon Johnson.

“He gave me the feeling he wasn’t pleased,” Bartlett would recall years later. “He wanted a record of his own. I sensed that he wanted the Kennedy administration to be Jack, and Bobby was going to turn it into a succession thing. Jack didn’t want a dynasty, although I am sure his father would have wanted that.”
By all accounts, Bill and Hillary Clinton never had any such qualms, and now their quarter-century project to build a mutual buy-one, get-one-free Clinton dynasty has ended in her defeat, and their joint departure from the center of the national political stage they had hoped to occupy for another eight years. Their exit amounts to a finale not just for themselves, but for Clintonism as a working political ideology and electoral strategy.

Twenty-five years ago, Bill Clinton almost single-handedly repositioned the Democratic Party for electoral success, co-opting and defusing Republican talking points and moving the party toward the center on issues like welfare and a balanced budget, in the process becoming the first presidential nominee of his party since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win two consecutive terms. But even as he left office after the bitter 2000 recount, and George W. Bush returned the White House to Republican hands, there were questions about whether Clinton’s political philosophy would endure beyond his own tenure.

In 2008, Barack Obama explicitly campaigned against what he saw as the small-bore, one-from-column-A and two-from-column-B policy initiatives—school uniforms and the V-chip to block violence on television—of the Clinton years. Rejecting the political advice of his Clinton-era chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, he swung for the fences instead, jammed health care reform through Congress on the narrowest of partisan votes, and paid a terrible political price, even while governing in most other ways as a pragmatic Clinton-style centrist.

What Bill and Hillary Clinton seemed to miss as they sought to burnish Bill’s legacy and build her a new one in this campaign was that the kind of “New Democrat” he’d once exemplified was now extinct, a victim first of Clinton’s own successes, and then of the economic and social dislocations of the globalism whose inevitability he foresaw when he predicted that Americans would one day “change jobs four or five times in their lifetimes!”

Bill Clinton’s “Third Way” ideology was also undone by sheer geopolitical realities—there are almost no Blue Dog Democrats left after a generation of redistricting, primary challenges and electoral defeats in the South—and by Obama’s cooler, more cerebral style of politics, which he deployed to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2008 as a strikingly fresh face.

By 2016, spurred by anger at Wall Street, and at Washington gridlock and business as usual, the Democratic Party had moved well to the left of the one Bill Clinton had inherited in 1992. And while Hillary Clinton recognized the change intellectually, she seemed unable to catch up to the practical realities of its political implications for her campaign. She embraced bold approaches on hot-button issues like immigration and gun control that would have been shocking for a Democrat in her husband’s day, and accepted what was arguably the most liberal Democratic Party platform in history, but that never seemed to be enough to satisfy younger voters, especially. “People thought she’d been conceived in Goldman Sachs’ trading desk,” says one veteran Clinton aide, noting the irony that this was millennial voters’ jaded view of a woman often seen in the 1990s as reflexively more liberal than her husband.

“Part of the problem is that there have just been lots and lots of changes in America in the past 25 years,” says Elaine Kamarck, who was a senior domestic policy adviser in Bill Clinton’s White House and is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “There were just a lot of cultural issues that were relevant for Bill that were gone by the time Hillary’s campaign came along, because by and large they’d been resolved or defused.”

Kamarck points in particular to the fraught politics of race and crime, a pair of linked issues to which Clinton, as a Southern Democrat, was acutely attuned—and at a time when memories of Republicans’ disemboweling of Michael Dukakis with the infamous Willie Horton ad, were still painful and fresh.

“A Democratic Party that was seen as more sympathetic to criminals than to victims was not a Democratic Party that was going to win elections. Bill Clinton had to correct that, and he did, and by 2015 we just did not have that kind of violent crime any more,” Kamarck says. The Clintons expressed regret for their 1990s posture, in light of declining crime rates, but Donald Trump still managed to paint the pair as somehow soft on crime, cherry-picking data on rising murder rates in cities like Chicago to claim that crime was “out of control” despite FBI statistics showing just the opposite was true overall.

To a journalist who covered the Clinton White House in the mid-1990s, the recent campaign’s emphasis on the 1994 crime bill’s call for harsh mandatory sentences, and Hillary Clinton’s contemporary warnings about criminals as “super-predators,” could seem jarring. The debate two decades ago was fully as much about whether the bill’s provisions for “community policing” and “midnight basketball” social service programs were too woolly-headed and soft-hearted. Somehow forgotten in the debate this year was Bill Clinton’s jiujitsu skill in parrying congressional Republicans to preserve his priorities—a phenomenon lamented by his former aides.

“People thought she’d been conceived in Goldman Sachs’ trading desk,” says one veteran Clinton aide.
“It is heartbreaking to have so many young people see him not as the guy who shut down the government to save the Great Society from Newt Gingrich,” says Gene Sperling, who headed Clinton’s national economic council, “but as somehow the guy who was the main mover of mandatory minimums, something that is not close to being the case.”

It has long been a commonplace that Hillary Clinton’s retail political skills are not the equal of her husband’s, and her senior advisers would chafe this year when Bill Clinton pressed to campaign more aggressively in white working-class areas of the Great American Middle, arguing that such voters had been lost for good by the Democrats—or at least for this year, during which disappointment over Obama’s inability to deliver for them had congealed into support for Trump. The truth is that Hillary Clinton did recognize the problem, even if she was unable to translate her awareness into an effective campaign message that would appeal to working-class whites.

After all, it was in the same speech to the elite Manhattan fundraiser where Clinton dismissed half of Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables,” that she also said this, about the rest of his backers: “But the other basket—and I know this because I see friends from all over America here—people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from,” Clinton said. “They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different—they won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”

Driven by data that persuasively suggested she could never credibly present herself as the embodiment of change, and persuaded that her best shot at winning lay in painting Trump as so unstable and unqualified as to be unfit for the presidency, Clinton set aside the broader themes that had helped her husband win the White House in the first place.

“I just think if the Democrats are ever going to be able to come back and restore power, they’re going to have to pay attention to the working class,” says Leon Panetta, who served as Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff and Obama’s CIA director and defense secretary. “I think Hillary got caught in the forest. To be able to be an effective candidate, you’ve got to be able to get out of the trees and see the forest for what it is.”

Panetta, whose late-career turn toward national security has overshadowed a keen political mind, thinks the surprisingly tough Democratic primary knocked the Clintons off kilter. “They had to deal with Bernie Sanders and the left. They had to make sure they retained that base, and they wanted to build on the Obama coalition that had gotten him elected and re-elected,” he told me. “And in that battle, they lost sight of the larger message she had to put across to the American people that she had her own version about where this country wanted to go, and that she, in her own way, represented change.”

Clinton was trapped, too, by her service as Obama’s secretary of state and her need to appeal to his winning coalition. She could not, or would not, say aloud what others in her party knew: That Obama had not only largely overlooked the concerns of white working-class voters but, with his health care overhaul, had been seen as punishing them financially to provide new benefits to the poorest Americans. Fairly or not, he lost the public argument.

The other truth is that a huge part of Clintonism was always Bill Clinton himself, and his singular ability to speak to both the most elite audiences and the most everyday ones in ways that could move each, with a unique combination of the Ozarks and Oxford that has rarely if ever been seen in contemporary American politics. Hillary Clinton’s best efforts to retail a retooled version of Clintonism in 2008 crumbled in the face of Obama’s promise of hope and change.

“Bill Clinton himself was Bubba,” as Kamarck puts it. “He always got that.” It was no accident that Clinton and Jimmy Carter—two white Southerners—stand as two of the only three Democrats to win the White House in the past half century (or that Obama had demographic advantages as an African-American that were not easily transferred to Hillary Clinton).

But Bill Clinton himself was far from an unalloyed asset in Hillary’s campaign this year. The rosy glow that had come to surround much of his post presidency, and his charitable foundation’s good works around the world, receded in the face of Trump’s relentless reminders of his personal and sexual misconduct in office, and his and his wife’s tendency toward legalistic corner-cutting—a point Sanders also drove home, even as he disavowed any interest in “her damn emails.”

“I think a lot of the problem for Hillary this time was that though Bill has kind of sustained a hold on the public’s imagination, and has a kind of charismatic quality that endears him to people and overshadows even his derring-do with Monica Lewinsky, it’s a mixed story,” says historian Robert Dallek. “The fact that you had someone like Trump who is so totally inexperienced gave him a considerable advantage.”

That advantage may have been a perverse one, given Trump’s own well-documented antediluvian conduct with women, but there is no arguing that Hillary’s campaign allowed her husband’s personal and policy legacy to be dragged back into the muck, at least in the short term.

“Because the campaign wanted to focus the debate on the future—and not a rehash of the 1990s—a certain amount of false caricatures were left unchallenged, which was unfortunate for him,” Sperling says. “You didn’t hear a lot of people putting in context that before Bill Clinton, Republicans had controlled the White House for 20 of 24 years, that his last six years in office were with an all-Republican Congress, or that the main reason he got crushed in 1994 was that he was perceived as being too progressive on health care.

“Do I think it will hurt Bill Clinton in the long run?” Sperling asks. “No, because he will still be most remembered for helping to bring about eight of the best years of shared growth and peace our country has had.”

Whatever the fate of Clintonism, the Democratic Party seems ready to move on; in a poll last week, 62 percent of Democrats and independents said they didn’t want Hillary Clinton to run again in 2020, a possibility that seems hard to fathom in any case. Fiery populists like Elizabeth Warren and Keith Ellison are vying to be the face of the opposition to Trump, whose early moves are already radicalizing Democrats to a degree unimaginable in the Clinton world of 1992, or even 1999.

Now Clinton’s time as the party’s Mr. Fix-It, and even as its “Explainer-in-Chief,” as Obama famously styled him, has ended for good. It will be left for someone in the next generation to build a new New Democratic coalition, one that can somehow rise above prevailing identity politics (much as Clinton did) to forge an interracial coalition of working-class voters who can carry the big swing states in the heart of the country that count in the Electoral College, and not just rack up a big popular vote advantage in the coastal cities. Whether that candidate is now as unknown as Barack Obama was just four years before he won the White House, or is hiding in plain sight in Congress or a statehouse or in a business on Wall Street or Main Street, the task will be the same as Bill Clinton’s was 25 years ago: to persuade the Democratic Party to stop making the same mistakes over and over and expecting a different result.

Source: Politico.com

Benue Workers Allege Half Salary Payment By Goverment

Civil servants in Benue State have alleged that they received half salary alerts for July 2016. This comes as the state congress of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has given a one-week ultimatum to the State Government to pay two months salaries from the Paris Club refund before the end of this week.

Consequent to this development, most workers that rushed to various banks in preparation for shopping were disappointed and more confused as to what line of action to take as a result of the half salary.

The State NLC chairman, Godwin Anya who spoke to The Guardian expressed displeasure with incidence and urged the workers to remain calm as the central labour centre has taken up the issue with government.


Anya said base on his interaction with government on the issue it was discovered that hitches were caused by the ongoing verification of workers embarked upon by the State government.

According to him, it is caused by e-payment issue and urged workers to be patient.The labour leader further intimated that during their meeting with the State governor, he promised to pay two months salaries to state civil servants, local government workers, teachers and pensioners.

Indeed, the state government recently received over N12.7 million from the Federal Government as part of the Paris Club refund and promised to set aside fifty percent of the amount for the payment of workers’ salary.

APC’s Attack On Pastor Adeboye, A Demonstration Of Its Devilish Mind-Set- PDP

The Ekiti State chapter of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described the statement credited to the State chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ekiti State, 

Mr Jide Awe, disparaging the person and image of the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye as a demonstration of the devilish mind-set of the party and height of political rascality, saying, denying the statement was a mere afterthought. 

Pastor Adeboye The PDP noted that Pastor Adeboye commending the State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose, for the governor’s courage and willingness to defend his people and the cause of the common man in the country was a statement of fact. 

Spokesperson of the PDP in the State, Mr Jackson Adebayo, in a statement on Monday, said; “it is the height of crude politics for the APC to insinuate that a man of God of Pastor Adeboye’s standing took bribe to commend Governor Fayose for what is obvious. 

He said; “Pastor Adeboye is a respected man of God. He is not a politician. He only said what he saw about Governor Fayose and the only Nigerians, who won’t want to accept the fact that the governor has stoutly defended Ekiti people and the common people of Nigeria, are those in the APC.” 

Mr Adebayo, who described the rebuttal, issued late on Sunday, by the APC Publicity Secretary, Taiwo Olatunbosun as an afterthought, added that, 

“The APC in Ekiti State has strong history of political intolerance such that anyone not with them must be condemned at all cost. 

“Not minding that Osun State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola is a leader of the party, the APC in Ekiti State reacted violently and disrespectfully to his visit to Governor Fayose in Ado Ekiti, calling him (Aregbesola) all kind of names.

 “If they could attack Governor Aregbesola, one of the party leaders for coming to visit Governor Fayose in Ekiti and describing the governor as an ‘omoluabi’ and a performer, why won’t they attack Pastor Adeboye who does not belong to their party? 

“If Jide Awe could lead over 50 members of his party to protest against a highly respected Ekiti leader like Aare Afe Babalola (SAN) in faraway Ibadan, Oyo State just because he was perceived as not supporting their party candidate in 2007, mere issuing a press release to abuse Pastor Adeboye is the least of what can be expected from the APC under a character like Jide Awe.” 

While admonishing the APC in the State to stop behaving rascally and imbibe political tolerance, the PDP Spokesperson said, “Denying the offensive press statement ostensibly as a result of negative comments from the public will not be enough. 

Jide Awe and his cohorts should seek forgiveness from God for speaking negatively against God’s anointed and desist from seeing whoever that is not on the same page with them politically as one that does not deserve to live.”

Source Vanguard

Abia Speaker impeached, new one Elected

Twenty out of the 24 members signed his impeachment notice but 19 of them sat at the plenary when he was impeached. 

16 members make up the quorum for the House to sit. Abia Speaker Martin Azubuike A new Speaker, Bishop Kennedy Njoku, representing Osisioma Ngwa North was immediately elected to replace Azubuike. 

He got 16 votes to defeat his opponent, Chikwendu Kalu, representing Isiala Ngwa South who got three votes, including the vote of the leader of the House, Chinedum Orji. Azubuike’s impeachment motion which was brought under matter of urgent public importance by Hon. Solomon Akpulonu, representing Obingwa East constituency, was seconded by Hon. Ifeanyi Uchendu from Ohafia South. In the motion, 

The former Speaker was accused of financial recklessness, high handedness and insensitivity to the members and staff of the House as well as abuse of office. 

The deputy speaker of the House, Rt. Hon. Cosmos Ndukwe presided over the session. 

After the motion was moved and seconded, the clerk of the House called out the names of those who signed the impeachment notice with each of them replying with “I signed”. 

Vanguard learned that this was the fourth impeachment attempt on the Speaker who was said to have been saved in the past by the leader of the House. 

Speaking to journalists, the mover of the motion said that they had on occasions, advised the former speaker on some of the allegations but he never listened to them. 

The former speaker who had earlier called journalists to say his side of the story later called off the briefing. 

Signs of trouble in the House showed in the morning when an unusual presence of police men were noticed at the gate and premises of the House. Before the impeachment, members had met for over two hours trying to resolve the matter by trying to extract an agreement from the former speaker that he would not preside over in a scheduled sitting of the House today. 

It was learned that members wanted to give him a soft landing until he attempted to take away the Mace, an action that annoyed the members who were there and they decided to go ahead with the impeachment.

SOURCE:Vanguard 

Two killed, mosque burnt as Igbo, Fulani clash over N100

Two persons lost their lives in a bloody clash between Igbos and Fulanis at the popular Gariki market, in Enugu.

The incident occurred on Wednesday night.

Our correspondent learnt, during a visit to the market on Thursday, that the deceased persons had been identified as Ali, a Fulani and Ifeacho Ifeanyi, an Igbo.

It was equally gathered that the clash was triggered by a disagreement over the sum of N100.

Eye witnesses disclosed that trouble started when, late on Wednesday evening, the said Ali, whose surname could not be ascertained as of the time of filing this report, came to slaughter a cow at an abattoir located in the Gariki market.

They said Ali, who ordinarily would have gone to slaughter his cow in the New Artisan market abattoir, opted for Gariki market abattoir because the New Artsisan market had been closed by the Enugu State Government following the killing of a policeman by a mob of Keke NAPEP riders.

However, Ali, paid N400 instead of the required N500, which infuriated Ifeanyi, leading to a dispute.

The dispute between the two men over the said N100 soon turned violent, and in the ensuing fight, Ali allegedly brought out a dagger and stabbed Ifeanyi several times in the stomach, exposing his intestines.

Ifeanyi slumped and died on the spot.

But Ali met his own end immediately, as some Igbo traders, who were enraged at the development, apprehended him as he tried to escape and beat him to death.

The irate Igbo traders went further by burning a mosque that is located inside the Gariki market, where the large population of Northerners in the market worshipped.

Our correspondent gathered that the crisis would have further degenerated to the burning of shops and loss of more lives, had it not been for a team of anti-riot policemen who arrived at the market to stabilise the situation.

Spokesman for the Enugu State Police Command, Mr. Ebere Amaraizu, who confirmed the development, said the police had restored normalcy in the market and environs.

He said the police was on the ground to prevent further breakdown of the law and order.

Amaraizu added that the police was investigating the incident.

Source: punch

Boko Haram leader in new video says group safe, not crushed

Boko Haram’s elusive leader Abubakar Shekau appeared in a new video on Thursday to dispute a claim that the jihadist group had been routed from its Sambisa Forest stronghold.

“We are safe. We have not been flushed out of anywhere. And tactics and strategies cannot reveal our location except if Allah wills by his decree,” Shekau said in the 25-minute video, flanked by masked armed fighters.

“You should not be telling lies to the people,” he said, referring to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari who said on Christmas Eve that the extremist group had been defeated and driven away from the forest, its last known bastion.

“If you indeed crushed us, how can you see me like this? How many times have you killed us in your bogus death?” he asked.

It was not immediately clear where the new video was shot, but Shekau who spoke in both Hausa and Arabic said it was filmed on Christmas Day.

Shekau last appeared in a video in September where he disputed a claim by the Nigerian military that he had been wounded in battle.

He vowed to continue fighting on until an Islamic state was imposed in northern Nigeria.

“Our aim is to establish an Islamic Caliphate and we have our own Caliphate, we are not part of Nigeria.”

Buhari had announced that a months-long military campaign in the 1,300 square-kilometre (500 square-mile) forest in northeastern Borno state had led to the “final crushing of Boko Haram terrorists in their last enclave in Sambisa Forest”.

The government in Abuja and the military have frequently claimed victories against the Islamic State group affiliate but access to the epicentre of the conflict is strictly controlled.

That has made independent verification of official statements about victories virtually impossible.

Attacks have meanwhile continued, making claims of defeating Boko Haram questionable despite undoubted progress in pushing back the group.

The Boko Haram’s insurgency has killed at least 20,000 and forced some 2.6 million others to flee their homes since 2009.

The violence has sparked a dire humanitarian crisis in the region, with thousands of children facing the risk of famine and starvation.


Source:punch

Trey Songz Arrested at His Detroit Concert After Destroying Stage

Trey Songz was arrested after his concert in Detroit on Wednesday night (Dec. 28), police confirmed to Billboard.

Videos posted online show the Grammy-nominated R&B singer tearing down parts of the stage at Joe Louis Arena and throwing objects when the venue cut off his microphone and lights after its 11:30 p.m. curfew.

"He became irate and belligerent, and started throwing microphones, speakers, basically anything he could get his hands on," police said.

Earlier, Songz had been asked to end his "Big Show at the Joe" performance, at which point he declared to the audience: "If that happens, I love you no matter what. All I want to do is give you the best show I'm capable of giving ... If they cut me off … I'm going the f*** crazy." He then starts singing: "Go on and do it. Go on and cut me off."

The 32 year old, whose legal name is Tremaine Neverson, is being held at the Detroit Detention Center, facing charges of malicious destruction of property and resisting and obstructing arrest.

Detroit police said a sergeant who attempted to remove Songz from the stage was hit in the head with a thrown object and treated at the hospital for a concussion.

Songz retweeted a fan-shot video with the caption, "They turned off his mic so he fsu'd," and video shot from the side of the stage shows the singer pulling down parts of the backdrop.

NO PLASTIC RICE IN NIGERIA – NAFDAC

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control on Thursday said laboratory result of the suspected fake rice showed that the product was not plastic but rice contaminated with micro organisms.

The Acting Director General, NAFDAC, Yetunde Oni, said this at a news conference in conjuction with the Nigeria Customs Service in Abuja.

Oni said the seized rice was unsatisfactory and therefore unwholesome for human consumption, stressing that the consignment would be destroyed upon handover by the NCS.

She explained that the product branded ”Best Tomato”, was in 25kg bag, without NAFDAC number, batch number, date markings and details of the manufacturer.

She said that `floating’ was negative, sedimentation was positive, cooking was normal, odour was normal, colour was off-white and E-coli was within specification.

She said lead and cadmium were not detected, pre-ashing was normal, ash, moisture and mould were within specification but coli form was above maximum limits.

Oni called on the public to report suspicious cases about all NAFDAC regulated products to any of the offices across the nation for prompt regulatory action.

She also said that the following numbers could be contacted for enquiries: 08013630600, 09094262773 and 08033112282.

The Comptroller-General, NCS, Col. Hameed Ali, said irrespective of the outcome of the laboratory analysis, customs would remain vigilant and alive to its responsibilities.

Ali, who was represented by the Deputy Comptroller-General, Tariff and Trade, Umar Iya, said NCS was guided by intelligence reports.

”Intelligence reports indicate that several metric tonnes of expired and dangerous rice are still lying in wait in warehouses in neighbouring countries and the target of the products is the Nigerian market”, he said.

Ali said that the NCS would intensify patrols to ensure that such economic saboteurs do not succeed.

He urged warehouse owners and transporters across the country not to accept such smuggled products in their facilities or vehicles respectively.

He warned that both the smuggled products and means of conveyance were liable to seizure.

(NAN)

Court sentences son of former House of Reps member to death by hanging

A High court sitting in Katsina State has sentenced 32 year old Mu’ammar Tukur, son of former House of Representatives member and District Head of Bakori, to death by hanging for culpable homicide.

Tukur was dragged before the court for using a knife to stab one Shafir Muktar to death on April 21st 2008 during a fight between him and some other young men at a football viewing center.


Delivering judgment in the case today, the presiding judge, Justice Abbas Bawale, said the argument put forward by the convict's counsel, AbdulAziz Olagoke, were unsustainable.

Bawale ‎said that the accused went into hiding between 2008 and 2013 after committing the crime and was arrested at the grave yard during the funeral of his deceased mother.

He added that Tukur's explanation that he was provoked to commit the crime was not satisfactory because he left the scene and came with the metallic instrument to commit the crime.

The judge said the prosecution had proved the case beyond reasonable doubt as required by law and sentenced the convict to death by hanging. He stressed that the plea for leniency could not be entertained because the court’s discretion was blocked by law and directed that the plea should be set to the state governor.

Barack Obama expels 35 Russian diplomats from the US, gives them 72 hours to leave the country

US President Obama on Thursday, accused Russia of hacking and interfering with the US presidential election on orders from President Vladimir Putin. Even though he had previously said, on several occasions, that he didn't think the election was rigged in any way. He ordered 35 Russian intelligence operatives to leave the country as part of sanctions ordered for what he said where the country's attempts to 'interfere with democratic governance' and harassment of U.S. diplomatic officials in Russia.

In a statement he released while announcing the sanctions against Russia, he launched a scathing attack on Putin's Kremlin. He all but named Ptuin in his statement as the brain behind the hacking. The said the hacking was 'ordered at the highest level'. The 35 diplomats were given 72 hours to leave the US with their families. So they have till Sunday to leave.

Other sanctions include revealing in public exactly what technical information the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI hold on Russian hacking capabilities.

Obama also shut down two Russian compounds, one in New York and one in Maryland, which he said had been used for intelligence-related purposes.

And he introduced financial sanctions on the two Russian spy agencies, the GRU and the FSB, four named GRU officers, and three companies said to have provided 'material support' for the GRU's hacking.

Russia responded to President Obama’s sanctions by reportedly closing the Anglo-American School of Moscow, a facility for the children of American, British, and Canadian diplomats.

Dmitry Peskov, a Putin spokesman, told reporters on a conference call that Moscow doubted the effectiveness of the measures, since Obama will leave office in just three weeks.

He said:

'Such steps of the U.S. administration that has three weeks left to work are aimed at two things: to further harm Russian-American ties, which are at a low point as it is, as well as, obviously, deal a blow on the foreign policy plans of the incoming administration of the president-elect,'.

However, senior administration officials said that they expect the sanctions to stick after Donald Trump takes over.

The official said:

'These are executive actions, so if a future president decided that he wanted to allow in a large tranche of intelligence agents, presumably a future president could invite that action. We think it would be inadvisable,'. 'Hypothetically you could reverse those sanctions, but it wouldn't make a lot of sense.' Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said Obama's measures were 'appropriate and better late than never.'


Source: CNN, Daily Mail, NY Post

Duterte says once threw man from helicopter, would do it again

MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened corrupt government officials with the prospect of being thrown out of a helicopter mid-air, warning he has done it himself before and had no qualms about doing it again.

The fiery-tempered former prosecutor said he once hurled a Chinese man suspected of rape and murder out of a helicopter.

"If you are corrupt, I will fetch you using a helicopter to Manila and I will throw you out. I have done this before, why would I not do it again?" Duterte said during a speech to victims of a typhoon on Tuesday, a clip of which is posted on a video feed of the president's office.

Duterte's latest threat comes just a few weeks after he admitted killing people during his 22 years as a mayor of Davao City, sometimes riding a motorcycle looking for "encounters to kill". Some senators have warned Duterte he risks impeachment over his comments.

He has repeatedly said those killings were part of legitimate police operations, including a hostage incident, and those killed were criminals, not suspects.

Ex-Argentine leader Kirchner charged, $633M frozen in corruption case, $633M frozen in corruption case

A judge on Tuesday approved criminal corruption charges against former Argentine leader Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and ordered frozen more than $630 million of her assets, pending the outcome of a federal trial. Judge Julian Ercolini supported charges of illicit association and fraudulent administration against the ex-leader, for allegedly steering dozens of government contracts to a personal business acquaintance. Kirchner, who endured multiple corruption scandals while she was in office between 2007 and 2015, has denied any wrongdoing and said the prosecution is politically-motivated. In addition to upholding the criminal charges, Ercolini also ordered $633 million of Kirchner's assets to be frozen pending the outcome of the prosecution.

Desmond Elliot Shares Beautiful Photos With His Family

The actor and member, Lagos state house of Assembly, Desmond Elliot shared the beautiful photos of him having lunch with his family on his Instagram page. See another photo with his wife below..

Kanye West shares beautiful family Christmas photo

He shared the photo and wrote: Happy Holidays. Beautiful!

Tiny Harris files for divorce from T.I. after 6 years of marriage

T.I.'s wife, Tiny Harris, has filed for divorce from the rapper after 6 years of marriage and 3 children together. Tiny filed legal documents for divorce at the Superior Court of Henry County in the state of Georgia on December 7. Read TMZ's report below:

"We're told the rapper and Tiny had been going through a rough patch that started several months before an awkward photo surfaced showing Tiny pictured with the rapper's nemesis, Floyd Mayweather, and Mariah Carey at her Halloween party. 

At the time, Tiny chalked to pressure into taking the photo next to the guy T.I.'s had beef with in the past. You'll recall the rapper and Floyd were involved in a crazy brawl on the Vegas strip back in 2014.

Despite the divorce filing the pair were amicable as they spent Christmas together. Tiny took to her Instagram to share an adorable video of T.I. watching over their nine-month-old daughter Heiress driving a toy car.


The couple have 2 sons and 1 daughter Heiress Harris who was born in March this year.

"God spared my life for a purpose" - Survivor of Reigners Bible Church collapse

Ndifreke Akpan, one of the lucky survivors of December 10th Reigners Bible Church collapse in Akwa Ibom walked away from the tragic scene without a scratch. She took to her Facebook page and wrote:

"Hi Everyone. Compliments of the season!!! It's exactly one week and two days since God saved my life in Reigners Bible Church building collapse while on official duty. To most of you, my silence since then has brought so much fear to your hearts. All I needed was to get over the shock and trauma that trailed the disaster. It was a disaster that God graciously caused my escape. Firstly, I want to use this platform to appreciate the Almighty God for making me a living testimony. I came out alive, very safe and sound. No injury, no scratch or whatsoever. It wasn't my making but the Lord's............... 

I am not in any way better than those that lost their lives and even those that got injured. It is by God's grace and mercies I am alive today to say THANK YOU JESUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Obviously he spared my life for a purpose and that purpose must be accomplished. For me, it's a second chance and I have vowed to God never to take it for granted but be more committed to him. To my family, friends, loved ones, well wishers and even you, I am deeply touched at your show of love and outpour of concern in diverse ways. It was simply amazing............ 

I lack words but may God bless and keep you all. The same God that rescued me from death on that fateful day will continue to preserve your lives IJN, Amen. Kindly join me to earnestly pray that the souls of the departed find solace with the Lord while the injured get healed speedily. Also join me to pray that God should comfort those left behind by the deceased and not to allow such devastating disaster befall us again, Amen! That's me ooooh lol. Hale and hearty to the Glory of God.... See you all in 2017....... 

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! & God bless. Shalom!"

U.S. Appeals Aourt Revives Clinton Email Suit

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a new legal development on the controversy over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails, an appeals court on Tuesday reversed a lower court ruling and said two U.S. government agencies should have done more to recover the emails.

The ruling from Judge Stephen Williams, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, revives one of a number of legal challenges involving Clinton's handling of government emails when she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, used a private email server housed at her New York home to handle State Department emails. She handed over 55,000 emails to U.S. officials probing that system, but did not release about 30,000 she said were personal and not work related.

The email case shadowed Clinton's loss to Republican Donald Trump in the Nov. 8 presidential election. Trump, who had repeatedly said during the bruising campaign that if elected he would prosecute Clinton, said after the election he had no interest in pursuing investigations into Clinton's email use.

While the State Department and National Archives took steps to recover the emails from Clinton's tenure, they did not ask the U.S. attorney general to take enforcement action. Two conservative groups filed lawsuits to force their hand.

A district judge in January ruled the suits brought by Judicial Watch and Cause of Action moot, saying State and the National Archives made a "sustained effort" to recover and preserve Clinton's records.

But Williams said the two agencies should have done more, according to the ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Since the agencies neither asked the attorney general for help nor showed such enforcement action could not uncover new emails, the case was not moot.

"The Department has not explained why shaking the tree harder - e.g., by following the statutory mandate to seek action by the Attorney General - might not bear more still," Williams wrote. "Absent a showing that the requested enforcement action could not shake loose a few more emails, the case is not moot."

The State Department does not comment on pending litigation, a spokesperson said.

Williams noted that Clinton used two nongovernmental email accounts at State and continued using the Blackberry account she had while a U.S. senator during her first weeks as the nation's U.S. diplomat. She only switched to the email account hosted on her private server in March 2009, the ruling said.

"Because the complaints sought recovery of emails from all of the former Secretary’s accounts, the FBI's recovery of a server that hosted only one account does not moot the suits, the judge wrote.

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