Yahoo sacks CEO for padding CV

Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson is out after it was found he padded his resume with an embellished college degree, ending his term at the company after just four months.

Scott Thompson

Yahoo confirmed Thompson "has left the company" in a statement posted late Sunday, after two news reports. Tech blog AllThingsD was the first to report the news, and the New York Times followed up with its own article.
Yahoo media chief Ross Levinsohn will be named interim CEO, the company said. Levinsohn had earlier been rumored as a successor to Carol Bartz, who was fired from Yahoo by phone in September. Instead, Thompson took the CEO role in January.
Thompson's resume scandal ignited just over a week ago, when activist shareholder group Third Point alleged that Thompson lied about details of his college degree.
New board members: Dan Loeb, the CEO of Third Point, has a long history of launching proxy fights -- and Yahoo was the latest company in his crosshairs. Third Point owns about 5.8% of Yahoo, and is the largest outside shareholder. In February, Third Point filed paperwork proposing four new Yahoo board members, including Loeb himself.

Nigerian on mission to help blacks survive cancer

Seun Adebiyi

A month after his 2009 graduation from Yale Law School, Seun Adebiyi learned he had not one but two lethal blood cancers and began an odyssey to find a bone-marrow donor. Mr. Adebiyi, 28, who came to this country from Nigeria as a child, made appeals through Yale, on radio stations, in a YouTube video and even on a trip to Nigeria to ask law students to volunteer.
But finally, his doctor called, saying that a Nigerian woman in this country had donated her baby’s umbilical cord blood to a “cord-blood bank” and that the stem cells in it were a close enough match. After his own marrow — the source of his cancers — was wiped out, those cells were infused into him at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He has been in remission since.
Now he is trying to repay that debt, with an effort that experts say may save the lives of both Nigerians and black Americans. In February, he helped start Nigeria’s national bone-marrow registry, the first in Africa outside South Africa. He is now raising money to start a cord-blood bank there.

Juju 'science' in action in Kenya

It is called 'magun' in Yoruba language.  I don't know what the Hausa, Igbo, or Efik tribes call it.  Or what the Ewe, Ashanti or Fanti tribes of Ghana call it, but it is a phenomenon that is well known in different parts of Africa.  It is simply a situation where a lover puts some juju on his/her partner so that if she/he goes out to engage in sexual relationship with somebody else, she/he is stuck in the act. It is often the male partners that put them on their wives.

Magun is a spell that either kills the afflicted person’s sexual partner in a variety of nasty ways or the carrier herself. 

Three grisly consequences as detailed in the film are sudden post-coital death following a cock crowing, after a bout of somersaults and vomiting blood or by being unable to disengage from a partner after intercourse.
In case you are still thinking that this is a myth, here is a case that happened in Kenya yesterday.  Could this local 'science' be the answer to infidelity in marriages?

Boko Haram: Killers for God

The Boko Haram jihadi outfit in Nigeria has struck at the heart blood of the Nigerian people -- its robust and creative media.
Boko Haram means "Books are Forbidden." It's a Muslim Hausa group that has swallowed the bin Laden Kool-Aid. In a country of 80 million Muslims and 80 million Christians and animists, BK wants to impose Muslim religious law on everyone.
Hard to believe there are people out there who believe their vision of God authorizes them to blow up newspapers, churches, police stations, markets and schools.
Children are now afraid to go to school across much of Northern Nigeria. Suicide bombers have killed indiscriminately in the huge traditional market city of Kano -- the last major city before traders cross the Sahara desert bearing carpets, cloth, gems, crafts and other ware to and from Marrakesh and other cities of North Africa.
I was sent to Nigeria by the U.S. government to train local journalists in 1993 so I was extremely sad to hear of the suicide bombing of the Abuja offices of ThisDay newspaper on April 26, and threats issued by video by Boko Haram against a slew of other mainstream Nigerian papers. I must assume some of the reporters I trained are now under the gun.
I recalled how Nigeria's history foundered when its great statesman Moshood Abiola died in jail, taking with him hope for a consensus to unite the religions of Africa's most populous nation.
I met Abiola at the Lagos airport in 1993. He was standing in a billowy traditional light blue and white robe and shaking hands with every traveler, porter and taxi driver in sight. His business card read: Moshood Abiola, Presidential Aspirant.
Other cards he gave me said he was editor and publisher of Concord newspapers and president of the Nigerian publishers association.
A few days later I rode with Abiola on the large campaign plane he'd bought from the British royal family, using some of the millions made in business working for ITT and his many investments in Nigeria.
At one stop in the north, Abiola handed out prizes to girls at a soccer tournament, telling thousands in the stadium that girls should stay in school and transform the nation. "We are all one nation, Muslims, Christians, Nigerians all," he said.
At another city he met with a few dozen senior political and tribal leaders, telling them bluntly: "I am a wealthy man and I have worked hard to make my fortune. And what do I do with my money? I hire your sons and your daughters. I believe in this country. Let us build it together."

Harvard, MIT launch joint online education platform

EdX platform will enhance classroom experience, build on distance learning initiatives, leaders say

John Harvard's statue at Harvard University

You don't need to be in Cambridge, Massachusetts again to study in and have a feel of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), two of the world's leading universities.
EdX, a new online education platform, launched today, will draw on the faculty, research, and institutional backing of both universities to provide Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) courses to users around the world. The partnership will not only build on both universities’ ongoing work in online education, but will provide a treasure trove of data on how students learn and how to teach them most effectively.

Boko Haram vows more attack on media in new video

The full transcript of the youtube video is below.

“This is a message from the public awareness department of the Jamatu Ahlis sunnah lil daawati wal jihad, a group engaged in jihad in Nigeria.
“We wish to explain about the attack we carried out on ThisDay newspapers. Some of the reasons why we decided to attack some media houses, especially ThisDay, is because the paper was used in dishonouring our prophet, Mohammad (SAW), during a beauty pageant in Kaduna in November 2002.
“At that time, some people who called themselves leaders of Muslims came out to say they had forgiven those who committed the offence.
“But based on our knowledge, we know that no one has the power to forgive anyone for an offence that God himself has given judgment, especially on an offence that has to do with dishonouring Prophet Muhammad (SAW).
“No one has the power to forgive this type of offence, and the judgment is for such persons to be killed.
“This lady that committed this crime, the judgment on her is to be killed at any opportunity; and the media house is also supposed to be driven out of existence whenever there is a chance to do so.
“We are just getting the opportunity to attack the media house, and we are hoping to continue these attacks until we drive them out of existence.
“It is our hope that Allah (SWT) will help his religion.

Explosion rocks police convoy in Taraba, kills 15

Just a day after the shocking devastation in a Bayero University Catholic mass where not less than 25 people died, another bomb explosion, this time targeted at a police convoy, has killed at least 15 while injuring several others.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing in the town of Jalingo but Islamist sect Boko Haram, which wants to carve an Islamic state out of Nigeria, has been blamed for many such previous attacks.
A string of bombings and shootings in the last five days has dampened hopes that arrests and killings of Boko Haram members by the military in recent weeks had stemmed its ability to carry out large-scale attacks in Africa's largest oil producer.

Jalingo is the capital of Taraba state, which borders Cameroon and had previously been spared the insurgency plaguing Nigeria's north.

"At least 11 people were killed and 22 people injured near police state headquarters Jalingo at 0830 a.m when the police commissioner was on his way to office," said Ahmed Bello, a local Nigeria Red Cross official.

He said the blast happened between the state government finance office and the police headquarters.
Abubakar Moyoyo, a Jalingo businessman, told Reuters by phone he had seen 11 dead bodies at the scene.
The police commissioner, Mamman Sule, said his team were investigating whether he was the target of the attack. He confirmed three deaths and said the windscreen of his car had been shattered by the blast.   Continued...