Saturday, 8 March 2014
239 feared dead on Malaysia Airlines flight as oil slicks spotted in sea
By Tania Branigan, Kate
Hodal and Philip Oltermann
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Distressed
relatives of people on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 wait in Beijing.
Photograph: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
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Mystery over Bejing-bound MH370
compounded as diplomats confirm two passengers travelling on stolen passports.
Hundreds are feared dead after a Malaysia
Airlines flight vanished in the early hours of Saturday, with Vietnamese
officials reporting oil slicks in the sea that could be connected to the
missing plane. The mystery of Beijing-bound MH370's disappearance was
compounded as diplomats confirmed that two passengers were travelling on stolen
passports.
Five young children were among the 239
people on board the Boeing-777 when it vanished from radar screens, about 40
minutes after taking off from Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am local time.
Search-and-rescue teams from Vietnam
and Malaysia have been searching waters in the South China
Sea for any sign of the flight. Singaporean teams and ships and aircraft from
China, the Philippines and the US are also at the scene or on their way to
help.
Why cutting aid for Uganda (and other countries) is not the solution
By Lizabeth Paulat
A discussion on how the developing
world spends its aid has run rampant the past few weeks. Not long after Uganda
signed the infamous anti-homosexuality bill into law, Holland, Denmark and
Norway pulled out millions in direct governmental aid.
Statements from John
Kerry and Obama have put many in Uganda on the defensive with speculation that
aid cuts are on the way.
Meanwhile, the U.S. ambassador in
Uganda, Scott DeLisi, recently told The Daily Monitor that, “If
Uganda doesn’t want our assistance, let the government tell us and we shall
turn to another African country.”
President Museveni has previously
stated he’s ready to stand up to the United States if they choose to withdraw
aid over the law. With tension in Kampala reaching palpable levels, such
exchanges have only inflamed the debate.
Friday, 7 March 2014
Nigeria: The uncomfortable truth of elusive economic development
THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH OF
ELUSIVE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT- NIGERIA’S CENTURY OLD FAILURES AND PROSPECTS FOR
A NEW NIGERIA.
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Obiageli (Oby) Ezekwesili
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Protocols:
Good afternoon, chieftains
and members of the All Progressive Congress.
Thanks for inviting me as
your Keynote Speaker at your Unveiling of Road Map Summit. I do not know how
you decided to take this high risk of inviting me to your gathering, knowing
full well that my zeal for candor can be generally unsettling for some people
of your class and occupation.
Since you took the risk, I have assumed the
liberty to speak boldly even to your discomfort especially considering that we
live in a season of grim when our country is greatly troubled. In perilous
times like this, Truth is the absolute freedom.
I shall be spurred on by the
counsel of George Orwell who in honor of truth stated that “in a time of deceit
telling the truth is a revolutionary act”. I further assume that if you wanted
someone with the skills of deceit, it would not be me that you would have
invited to your gathering. I therefore speak to you today not as a politician
Why we must place premium on sciences
By Kayode Ketefe
Today, the whole Nigerian
landscape is brimming with countless educational institutions ranging from the
primary to the tertiary and comprising both private and public establishments.
But there is paradoxically growing illiteracy amidst growing number of these
institutions.
The reason could be located in both the quality and nature of
education being imparted. Every great nation on earth today has been able
to achieve the feat through maximum acquisition of scientific knowledge and
technological capabilities.
This fact admits of no
exception in so far as our definition of greatness goes beyond mere material
prosperity. This is because there are some affluent nations who, though don’t
belong to the exclusive class of the scientifically competent, are nonetheless
ostentatiously wealthy because they keep exhausting and selling their abundant,
albeit exhaustible natural resources.
Wednesday, 5 March 2014
Be a social media fellow at the World Conference on Youth in Sri Lanka!
The Fellows would use social media
and internet based platforms such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram,
Tumblr etc. to do round-the-clock reporting of what is happening at World
Conference on Youth (WCY).
The team would use social and new media to
translate the discussions taking place at WCY to youth-friendly, compelling and
understandable language. They are also expected to use creative and new media
such as info-graphics, memes, photo essays, video clips etc.
As a group of independent young people
reporting from their own perspectives the Fellows would give a raw take on
what is happening in Colombo and also help bring the voices of the many that
can’t attend WCY to the discussion table.
The Intercultural Innovation Award 2014: Call for entries
Not-for-profit organizations that are
active in promoting intercultural understanding, with a track record of
managing intercultural projects and willingness to expand their range of
action, are eligible to apply. These organizations should be working in the
fields of: -migration and integration; -intercultural awareness; -education for intercultural
citizenship; -and/or the role of specific groups
(faith-based; women; youth; media).
Tuesday, 4 March 2014
Seven mobile statistics that should spur digital publishers to action
By
James Breiner
After years of predictions that this
year would be the year of mobile, finally it has arrived. So here are some
numbers that should prompt strategizing and action by digital media publishers.
1. Web traffic from mobile devices
Traffic via mobile devices was up 78
percent year over year in mid-2013, and 109 percent over 2011, according to
Ayaz Nanji, writing in Marketing Profs.
To cite one prominent media example
of the trend, ESPN has been registering more than half of its traffic from
mobile. For publishers, the message is clear: you need a mobile app or mobile-friendly version
of your content or your audience will leave you behind.
2. Time on mobile devices
In 2013, for the first time, Americans
spent more time on their mobile devices every day than on the desktop, according to eMarketer. Mobile's
share of daily time spent, 19.4 percent, is the only category that grew in the
past year: television, desktop computers, print and radio all declined, as they
have each year since 2010.
How to uncover corruption
By
Umar Cheema
In a 2011 Transparency International survey, more than
3,000 business executives from around the world were asked to assess the
effectiveness of various approaches to weeding out corruption.
The result: nearly half (49 percent)
indicated that investigative journalism played a critical role. Respondents
from Pakistan (73 percent) and Brazil (79 percent), countries where the press
reports fiercely on suspected acts of corruption, placed particular faith in
the media’s ability to uncover wrongdoing.
Why did the participants feel so
strongly that journalists can help? To answer this question, it is important to
remember that rampant corruption in less-developed regions of the world is
largely due to a lack of transparency and accountability.
Monday, 3 March 2014
100 years a failure? Nigeria’s centenary and the urgency of now!
By Jaye Gaskia
I have borrowed the
title of my piece today from the title of one of the most significant films
made in recent time: ‘12 years a slave’. For if it was true that the main
character of the epic film based on historical fact was captured as a free man
and sold for 12 years into slavery, then it can be said that it is also true of
the people of this country called Nigeria.
We were once free
peoples, before contact with Europe, before the slave trade, before
colonialism, and before the flag independence that thrust within a global
pecking order not within our capacity to influence or control. What is even
more apt because of the symbolism of the parallelism involved is that for being
free people we were captured and bound into a nation which for a hundred years
has remained a gigantic failure.
Sunday, 2 March 2014
Morocco’s initiative to promote media and information literacy in education
By Hanae Ait Hattani
Fez – Morocco: Since
our early childhood, we have become literate by learning to read and write
through the process of reciting the alphabet and recognizing when and how the
alphabet and symbols come together to form words and sentences.
In today’s world, messages are not just
words and symbols; they come in a variety of diverse sources such as radio,
TV, and the Internet. On a daily basis, people world-wide find themselves
bombarded with media messages, many of which are misunderstood, ultimately
causing problems in terms of distinguishing truth and perception.
Hence, literacy in another set of
symbols is necessary. It is crucial for society to become
well-versed in the skills needed to recognize when and how this new set of
symbols— the media— is put together to form messages; an objective that can
only be achieved through Media Information Literacy (MIL).
Iconic picture of Nigeria's living heads of state
The order as seen in this picture is Abdusalami Abubakar (Military
Head of State, 1998-1999); Muhammadu Buhari (Military Head of State, 1983-1985);
Yakubu Gowon (Military Head of State, 1966-1975), Goodluck Jonathan (President,
2010-date), Olusegun Obasanjo (Military Head of State, 1976-1979; President, 1999-2007),
Shehu Shagari (President, 1979-1983); Ibrahim Babangida (Military President,
1985-1993) and Ernest Shonekan (Chairman of Interim National Government, 1993)
- all male; three Southerners (one Minority), five Northerners (three Minorities);
five military dictators and four civilian heads of state (with Obasanjo doubly
counted).
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