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A senior aircraft engineer with the defunct airline, Mr. Frank Osch, expressed happiness with the commencement of the exercise; the same with former Senior Personnel Officer, Nigeria Airways, Mr. Felix Agbagwu, who also commended the government for the payment despite various failed promises. |
The federal government while making the payment to ex-NAL workers has vowed to punish those that ran down the national carrier that held so much hope in Africa before its demise. |
Government has already constituted panel to probe how the fortunes of rested airline nosedived. The Buhari administration said it was set to initiate the prosecution of persons indicted in the Justice Obiora Nwazota Judicial Commission of Inquiry White Paper. The panel was set up to find out why the airline collapsed a... |
Indications showed that government is looking into how to recover huge sums of money from individuals, organisations and agencies that mismanaged the airline. |
The Justice Obiora Nwazota, who served as chairman of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry, said the panel submitted its white paper to government in 2002. A source said government may constitute a team to initiate a probe into how the fortunes of the rested airline dwindled before it went under. |
President Muhammadu Buhari has indicated interest in the white paper on the Report of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry for the investigation of the management of Nigeria Airways Limited, 1983 – 1999. |
“The white paper indicted some high profile Individuals and organisations/agencies from whom various sums running into billions of naira were to be recovered. |
“The panel was mandated to look into the financial position and financial management of Nigeria Airways and to examine all books of account and records to ascertain their compliance with appropriate regulations,” disclosed inside industry source. |
The panel was to investigate the application of funds, including budgetary allocations, special grants, loans for specific projects and proceeds from the sale of its product and services as well as verify, evaluate, ascertain the authentic level of indebtedness between 1983 and 1999. |
Confirming the development, Animashaun, said though the workers and pensioners were excited about the approval for payment of their severance benefits, they want Buhari to ask questions on how the airline was ruined. |
He said the President should go beyond asking questions but insist on the implementation of the recommendations in the White Paper released by the Justice Obiora Nwazota Judicial Commission of Inquiry. |
Animashaun said looking into the recommendations of the White Paper could not be more timely than now, when the Justice Nwazota is still alive to give credence to the contents of the document. He said ex-Airways workers would want Buhari to push for the prosecution of politically exposed persons who were indicted in th... |
“Though we thank President Muhammadu Buhari for approving the release of our severance benefits, we learnt the President has started asking questions on what led to the collapse of the former national carrier. Beyond asking questions, Buhari must ensure government goes back to the white paper and institute a commission... |
“Every recommendation in the white paper should be implemented to the letter and the names of persons indicted in the report should be prosecuted. It is only when government does this that the wounds inflicted on the psyche of former workers of the rested national carrier would heal”, Animaseun said. |
Industry stakeholder and CEO of Centurion Security, Group Captain John Ojikutu (retd) said that President Buhari was determined to probe those that destroyed Nigeria Airways. |
“Buhari did not just ask questions about what destroyed the Nigeria Airways; he spoke about probe early this year, in February. It is those politically exposed persons that started the talk of Air Nigeria in place of Nigeria Airways in 1992/93, Virgin Nigeria, and even now, the not too transparent Nigeria Air. But it w... |
While the beneficiaries of the severance payment commend the federal government, they noted that the process of verification is ridden with hiccups. THISDAY spoke to industry stakeholder, Chris Aligbe on Wednesday who is a beneficiary and he said that the verification is slow because of inadequate equipment and personn... |
“I am sitting at the verification centre and waiting to be verified. Things are not going the way they should. There is inadequate equipment and personnel are not enough. We commend the federal government for making this possible, however,” Aligbe said. |
Prelude to the establishment of Nigeria Airways Limited, Nigeria had started getting regular flights from the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) and in 1958 Nigeria’s national carrier was established. |
NAL held sway until it was liquidated in 2003 but before then the industry was deregulated which opened the market for private investors to establish commercial airlines. |
MOSCOW – The Russian government, facing its worst economic crisis in a decade, on Wednesday detailed how it intends to cut spending over the next three years in all parts of the economy except military and social programs. |
Russia's economy has been battered by lower energy prices, a collapse in the value of the ruble and Western sanctions over its involvement in Ukraine. Russia's GDP is expected to decline by 4-5 percent this year, the first drop since 2009. The ruble has lost half of its value while the Standard & Poor's ... |
Faced with a slide in its public finances, the government earlier this month said it would slash spending broadly. In a more detailed report published Wednesday on the government's website, it foresees spending cuts of 10 percent this year and 5 percent over the next two years. |
The plan lists measures that authorities will take to support the economy including over $3.7 billion to prop up Russian banks and $700 million in agricultural subsidies. |
Speaking at the upper house of the Russian parliament, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said the government does not expect oil prices to go back to $100 a barrel so "we and our economy will have to adapt to new conditions." |
The budget proposal, which has yet to be approved by parliament, will not affect military and social spending, which account for 4.2 percent and 5 percent of spending, respectively. |
“KEPLER was my North, my South, my East and West… I thought Kepler would last forever: I was wrong.” So lamented astronomer Geoff Marcy on discovering that the space telescope might have spotted its last exoplanet. |
Marcy’s impassioned pastiche of W. H. Auden’s Funeral Blues was much remarked on after NASA’s announcement of Kepler’s abrupt demise. It is unusual, after all, for a piece of orbital machinery to be commemorated in verse – even a telescope whose legacy promises huge advances in answering one of the most important quest... |
But perhaps it should be. Poets have often taken inspiration from their contemplation of the universe, after all, and Kepler is just a particularly sophisticated form of such contemplation. |
Scientists, too, have turned to poetry before – not least the human Johannes Kepler. The Rudolphine Tables, a ground-breaking astronomical catalogue prepared by Kepler from data gathered by the deceased Tycho Brahe, begins with a fine illustration – and a lengthy poem. So Marcy’s poem actually respects a venerable trad... |
Ferrari, Porsche and Bugatti were just some of the big-name brands unveiling their latest luxury sports cars at the Frankfurt Motor Show. |
The International Motor Show, in German known as the Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung is the world's largest motor show. |
It is Germany's most important car event, where new models and outrageous concept cars vie for the spotlight. |
Phyllis and John Thompson said a hole in their lawn shows how close they came to the wrong end of an hours-long standoff Tuesday night in southwest Amarillo. |
"It must have been a hell of a shot," said John Thompson, 71, a retired United States Air Force Chief Master Sergeant. |
He and Phyllis Thompson, 72, said they heard five shots ring out leading up to the standoff, which took place across the street from their house in the 5900 block of Winkler Drive. |
Police responded to the call, which started as a domestic dispute, about 5 p.m., and a complainant met officers at a location away from the house to tell them what was happening, police said. |
Phyllis Thompson said the house where the standoff took place is on the east side of the cul de sac at the end of the block. |
Police approached the back of the house and entered the garage to make contact with Robert Lingerfelt, 59, who brandished a handgun and pointed it at police after he opened a door to the house, authorities said. |
Two officers fired at Lingerfelt, who barricaded himself inside the residence, Potter-Randall Special Crimes Unit Lt. Erick Bohannon said. SWAT officers and crisis negotiators were called to the scene, police said. |
After hearing the shots, Phyllis Thompson said she called her daughter, Cheryl Milbach, 49, who lives nearby. Milbach was walking into the house from the back alley when an officer shouted at her to get down, and she quickly went into the house, Phyllis Thompson said. |
The Thompsons said police had swarmed the neighborhood by that time, and officers told the family to leave the area, Phyllis Thompson said. Police said they needed to use the Thompsons' house as a command post for the standoff, the Thompsons said. The Thompsons had just sat down to eat dinner after cooking ribs, Phylli... |
Police took Milbach's phone number and told the family to leave through the alleyway, Phyllis Thompson said. |
"They kept talking about a hostage situation," she said. |
Immediately before the Thompsons heard the shots, John Thompson said he saw what appeared to be someone running past a window in their house. The Thompsons weren't sure if the person was a police officer or someone else, they said. |
About 8:15 p.m., SWAT officers took Lingerfelt into custody in the front yard of the house. He was taken into custody and transported to a local hospital to be treated for his injuries, Cpl. Jerry Neufeld said. |
Phyllis Thompson said she, her husband and daughter returned to their house after Milbach received a news alert on her phone advising Lingerfelt had been placed in custody. They found five police officers in their driveway and authorities told them they were waiting for investigators to take a look at a large bullet ho... |
"(Police) knocked on the patio door and said 'We're gonna go now. Thank you,'" Phyllis Thompson said. "And that was it." |
Lingerfelt was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening, and later booked into the Randall County jail on four counts of aggravated assault against a police officer, authorities said. |
Phyllis Thompson said she did not know her neighbors across the street. The Thompsons' moved to the home from Oklahoma City in December to be closer to their daughter, Phyllis Thompson said. No one could be reached at the home where Phyllis Thompson said the standoff took place. |
Phyllis Thompson said she hadn't experienced anything like the standoff before, and did not wish to experience anything like it in the future. |
"It's just really kind of scary," Phyllis Thompson said. "That doesn't happen every day." |
Spc. Jordan E. Goode, 21, of Kalamazoo, Mich., died Aug. 11 in Zormont, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered from an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C. |
For more information related to this release, the media may contact the 82nd Airborne Division public affairs office at (910) 432-0661. |
The NRG Stadium "Fan Cam" keeps catching Longhorn believers at inopportune moments. Not that there are any good times the camera operators can choose from. |
The whole Texas Bowl is one big whoops for the University of Texas. And there the orange clad citizens who yearned for more than Mack Brown are up on the giant scoreboard screens, pained glum expressions locked on their faces, arms crossed or hands over their heads, shaking their noggins and looking around in bitter, b... |
At least, the "Fan Cam" never captures a UT backer slugging a stadium chair. |
It's a long lost night for Charlie Strong's program. On a day when a Texas A&M student assistant coach goes haywire and punches West Virginia players in a bowl game, Texas somehow manages to end up looking even worse. Oh, in any real-life comparison, the Aggie brat's crime is much, much more egregious than the Longhorn... |
Texas looks thoroughly unprepared for the skill and power of a bottom-rung 2-6 SEC team. It's an embarrassing, awkward, sometimes pathetic performance. |
But this isn't real life. It's the warped world of college football. And there are plenty of A&M fans pumped about the shootout win over West Virginia, sideline punches no matter. It's sad to say but Arkansas' SEC-level 31-7 beat down of Texas is liable to linger much longer. |
When you're a reputed big-time college football program and you manage 29 total yards of offense in three quarters and less than 60 for the entire game, you're not going to be allowed to forget it. Texas' 59 yards of total offense is the low for any FBS team this year. |
That's right, no offense in college football has been worse than the Longhorns are in the Texas Bowl. There's bad — and then there's historically putrid. |
"You don't ever expect to go out and get hammered 31-7 in a bowl game when you've had a month to prepare," Strong says afterwards. |
Texas' first-year coach looks livid. And he should be. For all the needed shock and awe culture change that Strong's rained down on the UT program, for all the discipline dismissals, for all stand-up talk ... some games are still nearly unforgivable. And this is one of them. Texas clearly isn't ready to play. It doesn'... |
It's the last thing Strong needs now that he's building real recruiting momentum, having landed the No. 1-rated prospect in all of Texas. |
It's only one super-sized game. But there's no denying that Charlie Strong chokes in his first Longhorns bowl experience. No wonder it's so hard for all those UT fans to do anything but grimace. This one stings ... and it leaves Texas saddled with the type of 6-7 final record that it took Brown 13 seasons in Austin to ... |
"We have a long way to go," Strong says. "You can't lose seven games. You can't have losing seasons. That's not what this program is all about. It's not the standard at Texas." |
It is hard to talk standards when your offense averages 1.4 yards per play. |
It's so bad for the Longhorns that an 8-yard UT second quarter pass completion draws raucous cheers. Hey, that's nearly a third of the Longhorns total offense in one play! |
At one point, Texas running back Johnathan Gray — a junior who should know something about ball security by now — just drops a handoff put on his hip in his own end zone, gifting Arkansas a touchdown. The "Fan Cam" shots after this gaffe are particularly revealing. |
"It's about execution," Strong says. "It's not about what another team does to you. It's about what you do to yourself." |
It's also about the SEC getting another pelt on its wall. The night starts with UT having at least 65 percent of the crowd. It ends all Arkansas. |
"I told our guys before we took the field to start the game that there were a lot of Razorback fans ready to go hog-wild, and we gave them every reason to do it," Bielema, the coach who walked away from a Big Ten power to take on an SEC rebuilding job, says. |
Strong suffers in comparison to Kevin Sumlin's first season at Texas A&M when the Aggies burst onto the SEC scene like a supernova, blazing a new way for college football in Texas. Arkansas fans breaking into "SEC! SEC! SEC!" chants when the Grand Canyon-sized margin grows to 31-7 really seems like piling on. |
"We've just got to execute our plays better," says Tyrone Swoopes, the Texas quarterback who completes two passes longer than 10 yards and none longer than 15 yards. |
When a reporter asks Swoopes if it's really that simple, he shrugs. |
"It kind of feels like that's what Arkansas was doing," he shoots back. |
Swoopes is sitting on a raised dais in the Houston Texans' team auditorium, still in his No. 18 orange Longhorns jersey. TV cameras dominate the center of the room, with overflow reporters hugging the walls. |
It is amazing how far the Texas Bowl (which has undergone more name changes than a child of overenthusiastic hippie parents of the 1970s) has come in just the last few years. The 2010 game — which saw Baylor and a pre-stardom Robert Griffin III get completely dismantled by Illinois — produced less buzz locally than som... |
This Texas-Arkansas game matters though. It truly packs the stadium (no need for inflated crowd figures on this night). It's something people are talking about. |
The Monday night football stage — on the first Monday of the season that there's not NFL Monday Night Football — only adds to the game's big-time feel. |
Run by Jamey Rootes and the Lone Star Sports & Entertainment subsidiary of the Texans, Houston's college football bowl game has always been a first-class operation (it quickly gained a reputation with coaches' wives for being one of the better run bowls). Now, it is starting to get the type of matchups worthy of its op... |
There is history in the building and not just the old Southwest Conference matchup renewed. |
Texas legend Earl Campbell, sitting in a golf cart to rest his football ravaged body, draws the loudest cheers during the pregame ceremonies. When you do something great at a football school like Texas, it matters forever. |
When you do something blah ... well, Charlie Strong suddenly seems to be on his way to finding out. |
"Texas has got to mean something," Strong says. "Right now it doesn't mean much." |
That's on Strong. Just like this bowl game. |
Xenophobic violence against African foreign nationals and a recent government clampdown on undocumented migrants does not extinguish the alluring glimmer of hope that South Africa represents, particularly to desperate people facing unliveable conditions in impoverished countries. The journey south is fraught with extre... |
“We are 204 in this cell,” says Thomas, a Malawian inmate, pointing to the number written on a blackboard in the 60m2 cell – about the size of five parking bays. Fellow inmate Abeba is in his thirties and comes from Durame, an impoverished town in one of Ethiopia’s rural areas. “We are not criminals! But now, in prison... |
It’s the terrible conditions, health impacts and isolation that chip away at them. The worst is at night. The heat emanating from dozens upon dozens of bodies inside the small cell is so stifling it’s palpable. The men are squeezed together on the bare cement floor, with an area of less than 0.5m2 for each person. Pack... |
This is the harsh human reality of overcrowding in Maula, which was originally built to accommodate 800 prisoners. Today, Maula is bursting at the seams with 2 650 inmates – more than three times the prison’s capacity. Mixed in among this desperate population are the most vulnerable: 270 undocumented migrants who were ... |
The migrants in Maula tell me they were all driven by desperation to survive and search for work opportunities. These men are all detained on charges of illegal entry in Malawi, and most have been sentenced to three months’ detention. But the reality is that they have been locked away for far longer. |
While the law requires they be deported back to their countries of origin after detention, bureaucratic delays impede any way forward, and they are expected to cover their own expenses for repatriation. Most do not have the money to do this. |
Three young men are grading beans outside their cell. “You see? These are not good. They are uncooked and rotten,” says one of the men. “We eat them like that,” another inmate adds. Prisoners in Maula get food only once a day. They usually eat a plate of nsima – ground maize that fills the stomach but doesn’t provide m... |
MSF medical teams working in the prison’s clinic have observed the inmates’ poor health condition due to their long and difficult journeys and detention conditions. Aside from malnutrition many suffer from pneumonia, severe malaria and sexually transmitted infections. Recently a group of Ethiopians went on a week-long ... |
Given migration patterns in southern Africa, the issue of undocumented migrants transiting through Malawi will likely increase over time. The situation for these migrants is becoming a humanitarian concern. |
Emmanuel, another Ethiopian inmate, pulls out his torn wallet. He opens it and shows me the transparent sleeve inside. Instead of pictures, it holds his talisman: a piece of paper with three phone numbers on it. “These are my friends in South Africa,” he says. |
A young boy leaning on a wall turns to me: “My dream is to reach South Africa; this is what I have worked towards for years. I knew it would be difficult, but I never thought I’d end up here. I thought Africans were all brothers. But here … here it seems different.” He stares at me – as if questioning for the first tim... |
BDS Founder Omar Barghouti Barred From Traveling To U.S. |
Barghouti was scheduled to speak at a number of events, including one on Thursday in Washington, D.C., alongside Forward columnist Peter Beinart. Barghouti was also planning to attend his daughter’s wedding. |
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