The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Nobel

  • A Nobel for Rochas

    A Nobel for Rochas

    It is an old truism that a child would willy-nilly concentrate on his tummy when he bathes. Of course it’s not because his stomach area is the dirtiest part of his body but if we must wager, it’s the part that most fascinates him;  the part he can most connect with both literally and metaphorically.

    This is what comes to mind when Hardball conjectures the rationale for the strange happenings in the heartland of the southeast – Imo State, Nigeria. Recently it was the erection of anomalous statues; an act that enjoyed global uproar and earned the poor state high grades in international odium.

    Nigerians and the now captive Imolites were still trying to wrap their minds around that sordid statue of Jacob Zuma planted by their boisterous governor, and he drops yet another ‘bomb’ on them.

    While some think that the latest action is a meeting (mating if you like) of minds between knavery and ribaldry, Hardball sees an award-winning novelty.

    Here is the story: Gov. Okorocha appoints 28 commissioners; just a few short of the number of ministers at the federal level. In a state that cannot discharge such basic functions as paying pension to elder citizens; why on earth would it have separate ministries for Tertiary Education; Gender and Social Development; Rural Development; Agric and Food Security; Transport; Tourism; etc.? All of these could have been merged to have a total of not more than 14 ministries. That used to be the norm.

    But if you forgive the dicing up of ministries, what do you say to the creation of the Ministry of Happiness and Couples’ Fulfillment!?

    No let’s take that back. After a full day of tumult and hysteria on social media, State Government made the vital correction that it is indeed PURPOSE Fulfillment and not COUPLES Fulfillment.

    Many commentators were already conjecturing a department of the Ministry that would be in charge of dispensing Viagra and premium coital latex to Imo couples…

    But can’t they see that Couples’ Fulfillment is more germane to creating happiness among the citizenry than the rather nebulous Purpose fulfillment? No man or woman would deign to be happy if he/she has an unhappy bedroom. This most novel ministry would have been perfect in clearing the snafus in bedrooms across the state.

    Hardball hereby appeals to Gov. Rochas to keep the Ministry as indeed: MINISTRY FOR HAPPINESS COUPLES ENJOYMENT. One thinks a Nobel awaits him for novelty in governance by the time he is through. How come no one thought about it all the while that once you win the bedroom battles, you have won all wars!

    Imagine a ministry that deals with chronic erectile dysfunction, unwarranted coitus-interruptus and frigid-at- fifty issues. That would be the day! Go Rochas!

  • Foundation, Nobel carpets to hold empowerment programme

    Lucky Fibers Plc, makers of Nobel Carpets and Rugs, with Prime Women Builders Foundation of Nigeria (PWOBFON), is to organise a vocational training on ways to effectively run businesses.

    There will be trainings in event management, cake and pastries making, wire works, bead making, make-up and gele, tailoring, ICT and so on.

    The programme will also afford participants, who would want to be marketers and distributors of Nobel Carpets and Rugs’ products, to do so as there will be a session for the company to showcase its products and services, to enlighten participants on how to generate more income with Nobel Carpets soft covering solutions.

    According to the General Manager of Lucky Fiber Plc, Mr. Jitesh Pamnani, the company, being a brand that believes in the well-being of Nigerians, is co-hosting the initiative to provide valuable business information and support to alleviate poverty in the society.

    “This event is organised to equip participants with basic, yet necessary skills and relevant equipment to be self-reliant. It will provide the necessary support in becoming a business owner.

    “It is our intention to support everyone willing to do business with a minimum of N50,000, and co-opt them into our business as sales agent, to enhance their income.

    “This is an initiative which will provide valuable information and opportunities to create more sources of income and diversification of trade and work skills.”

    The empowerment will hold on August 19 at Epe Local Government Area. There will also be free health screening for participants.

  • Nobel carpets to reward creative designers

    Nobel carpets to reward creative designers

    Lucky Fibres Plc, makers of Nobel carpets & Rugs has concluded plans to lavishly award exceptional creative designers.

    The competition tagged ‘Reward Your Creativity’ expected to last till November 25th 2015 is specially designed to engage, celebrate and reward creative individuals whose original ideas and concepts are displayed through appealing designs.

    The company is set for the creativity reward as part of its missions to embolden talented individuals in the world of creative design and art,

    Expatiating on the competition, Mr. Jitesh Pamnani, General Manager, Lucky Fibres, stated that the competition will offer a platform for creative designers across Lagos, regardless of age and experience, to showcase their exceptional talent in designing a beautiful carpet.

    “This competition is to create a global awareness and understanding for great design practices and principles by highlighting best designs and rewarding creativity. At the end of this competition, the 1st prize winner will be endowed with Nobel Carpets and Rugs for his/her house and an award, worth N100,000.

    “Also the 2nd prize winner will go away with Nobel Carpets and Rugs centre rug and a phone with an award worth N30,000 while the 3rd prize winner will have Nobel Carpets and Rugs centre rug and an award,” he noted.

    On how to participate, Mr. Jitesh explained that interested participants are urged to come up with creative design / concepts for a carpet/rug reflecting a high sense of originality.

    “The design is to be sent to nobelcarpetsandrugs@gmail.com or call 08113639999. Winners will be rigorously selected by Nobel Carpets and Rug Creative Judges and announced,” he said.

    [news_box style=”2″ display=”tag” link_target=”_blank” tag=”Nobel” orderby=”random” count=”4″ show_more=”on” show_more_type=”link”]

  • Deaton wins Nobel prize in Economics

    Deaton wins Nobel prize in Economics

    Princeton University’s Angus Deaton yesterday won the Nobel prize in economics for his wide ranging work on consumption that has  helped redefine how poverty is measured around the world, notably in India.

    Deaton, 69, won the eight million Swedish kronor (about $975,000) prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for work that the award committee says has had “immense importance for human welfare, not least in poor countries.”

    The Secretary of the award committee, Torsten Persson, said Deaton’s research has “really shown other researchers and international organisations like the World Bank how to go about understanding poverty at the very basic level; so that’s perhaps the finest and most important contribution he has made.”

    Persson singled out Deaton’s work in showing how individual behavior affects the wider economy and that “we cannot understand the whole without understanding what is happening in the miniature economy of our daily choices.”

    Deaton, who was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and holds U.S. and British dual citizenship, said he was delighted to have won the prize and was pleased that the committee decided to award work that concerns the poor people of the world.

    In a press conference following the announcement, Deaton said he expects extreme poverty in the world to continue decreasing but that he isn’t “blindly optimistic.”

    He said there are “tremendous health problems among adults and children in India, where there has been a lot of progress.” He noted that half of the children in the country are “still malnourished” and “for many people in the world, things are very bad indeed.”

    The prize committee said Deaton’s work revolves around three central questions: How do consumers distribute their spending among different goods; how much of society’s income is spent and how much is saved; and how do we best measure and analyze welfare and poverty?

    Committee member Jakob Svensson said Deaton introduced the “Almost Ideal Demand System,” which has become a standard tool used by governments to study what effect a change in economic policy – such as an increase in sales taxes on food – will have on different social groups and how large the subsequent gains or losses will be.

    The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences also highlighted the model that has become known as the Deaton Paradox, in which he laid bare a contradiction between earlier theory and data on consumer behaviour.

    Ingvild Almas, associate professor at the Norwegian School of Economics, said the Indian government has changed its methodology for measuring poverty thanks to research from the likes of Deaton and that has affected poverty-reduction policies.

    Yesterday’s announcement concludes this year’s presentations of Nobel winners.

    The medicine prize went to three scientists from Japan, the U.S. and China who discovered drugs to fight malaria and other tropical diseases. Japanese and Canadian scientists won the physics prize for discovering that tiny particles called neutrinos have mass and scientists from Sweden, the U.S. and Turkey won the chemistry prize for their research into the way cells repair damaged DNA.

    Belarusian investigative journalist Svetlana Alexievich won the literature award while the peace prize went to The National Dialogue Quartet in Tunisia for its contribution to building democracy in Tunisia following the 2011 Jasmine Revolution.

    The awards will be handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896, at lavish ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo.

  • Tunisian mediator group wins Nobel Peace Prize

    Tunisia’s National Dialogue Quartet won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for helping build democracy in the birthplace of the Arab Spring, an example of peaceful transition in a region otherwise struggling with violence and upheaval.

    The quartet of the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA), the Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH), and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers was formed in the summer of 2013.

    It helped support the democratisation process when it was in danger of collapsing, the Norwegian Nobel committee said in its citation.

    “This is a great joy and pride for Tunisia, but also a hope for the Arab World,” UGTT chief, Hussein Abassi, told Reuters.

    “It’s a message that dialogue can lead us on the right path. This prize is a message for our region to put down arms and sit and talk at the negotiation table.”

    With a new constitution, free elections and a compromise politics between Islamist and secular leaders, Tunisia has been held up as a model of how to make the transition to a democracy from dictatorship.

    “This a brilliant example, I think Tunisia is one of the Arab countries that has done best since the so-called Arab Spring and the upheavals in that part of the world,” said Ahmad Fawzi, chief United Nations spokesman, in Geneva.

    The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 8 million Swedish crowns ($972,000), will be presented in Oslo on December 10.

  • Alexievich wins Nobel Literature Prize

    Alexievich wins Nobel Literature Prize

    Belarussian writer and dissident Svetlana Alexievich won yesterday the 2015 Nobel Literature Prize for her work chronicling the horrors of war and life under the repressive Soviet regime.

    The Swedish Academy hailed the 67-year-old for writings that were “a monument to suffering and courage in our time” — tableaux of World War II, Chernobyl and the war in Afghanistan, crafted through thousands of interviews.

    Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko congratulated Alexievich for her win, though none of her books is published in her home country amid what the author has described as “a creeping censorship”.

    “By means of her extraordinary method — a carefully composed collage of human voices — Alexievich deepens our comprehension of an entire era,” the Nobel academy said.

    The author dedicated the prize to her native Belarus.

    “It’s not an award for me but for our culture, for our small country, which has been caught in a grinder throughout history,” she told reporters in Minsk, adding that history showed there was no place for compromise when faced with oppression.

    “In our time, it is difficult to be an honest person,” she said. “There is no need to give in to the compromise that totalitarian regimes always count on.”

  • DNA repairs’ discoverers win Nobel prize in Chemistry

    The 2015 Nobel prize in Chemistry has been awarded to the discoverers of DNA repairs.

    Tomas Lindahl and Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar were named as the winners yesterday morning at a news conference in Stockholm, Sweden.

    Their work uncovered the mechanisms used by cells to repair damaged DNA – a fundamental process in living cells and important in cancer.

    Prof Lindahl is Swedish, but has worked in the UK for more than three decades.

    The prize money of eight million Swedish kronor (£634,000; $970,000) will be shared among the winners.

    “It was a surprise. I know that over the years I’ve occasionally been considered for a prize, but so have hundreds of other people. I feel lucky and proud to be selected today,” Lindahl, from the UK’s Francis Crick Institute, told reporters.

    Claes Gustafsson, from the Nobel Committee, said the recipients had “explained the processes at the molecular level that guard the integrity of our genomes.”

  • Nobel committee goofed on Malala

    Nobel committee goofed on Malala

    SIR: “Am studying economics in college and have to pass my exams before being awarded  grades” was a Facebook  message sent by one American student during a special BBC World Have Your Say  programme on  the announcement that United States’ President Barack Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. The message was the tip of the iceberg of the criticisms that followed the prize.

    The award of this year peace  prize  to Kailash Satyarthi for me is a recognition well-deserved but  to Malala –  whom I always argued will receive the prize but not now- is too early. It falls within the committee’s technique of awarding the prize to people for what they will do rather  what they have already done. Since 2009,  no worthy recipient of the peace prize has been seen with exception of Laymar Gbowee and  Tawakkul Kar.

    The Nobel Peace committee has through this act made the Nobel Peace Prize not just the cheapest, but the most controversial one.

    Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five prizes created by the Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiology or Medicine, and Literature. Since 1901, it has been awarded annually to those considered by the Nobel Peace Committee to have contributed exceptionally to the world peace.

    Judging from Alfred Nobel’s Will, many people who have received the award never deserved it.  The Will stated that only ‘person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses’ should be awarded the prize.

    Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager became a worldwide figure when she was shot by Taliban for campaigning for girls’ rights to education at Swath valley, Pakistan. She was treated briefly in Pakistan and later flown to UK. On recovery, she started schooling in London from where she got a number of awards and accolades – and now Nobel Peace Prize.

    Malala no doubt, is a promising young girl with golden future whose campaign for girls education in Pakistan is a great project. The project however, has not recorded great success to attract Nobel Prize. It sounds awkward that the world’s most prestigious award on fostering World Peace was given to Malala just because she was shot by Taliban!

    One important thing Nobel Peace committee should learn from Mo Ibrahim Foundation is this: You must not award the prize every year!

    • Jonathan Asikason,

    Enugwu-Ukwu, Anambra State.

     

  • Saving 1,000,000 LIVES; Nobel Prize for MDG inventors; Poor Health Budget AGAIN!

    Saving 1,000,000 LIVES; Nobel Prize for MDG inventors; Poor Health Budget AGAIN!

    I am an obstetrician, a courier delivering babies to paediatricians. The new initiative ‘Saving 1,000,000 lives’ is a good one as a health professional is only as good as the equipment at hand. The Nigerian delivery system must be forced into the 21st Century with an electronic fetal monitor, sonicaid, in every labour room and the alert line for safe delivery must move to above Apgar Score 5. Government should ensure that medical equipment only attracts single digit bank interest loans! Why is medical equipment more expensive here than in the USA or UK?

    What is the fate of a baby in a country where policemen accompanying vaccinators are killed? We are faced with preventable diseases including ‘Ignorance’ and malaria. IGNORANCE ELIMINATION and EDUCATION are keys to good heath. ‘Saving 1,000,000 lives’ requires that there is a multimillion naira Health/Media Outreach Budget and scheduled Health Ministries/all Media houses meetings for life skill messages/advertisements. Is there CSR ‘free’ airtime, 30-60minutes/day divided into 30-60 seconds slots for life skill messages?

    Why do the Secretary General of the UN, Directors of WHO and UNICEF not select 50-100 most important life skill messages annually for the ‘Global Fund Membership’ as ‘Global Fund Advert Moral Media Group’ and disseminate them on commercial packaging and in international and national media?

    Where are the UN, WHO, UNICEF incentives, Annual Prizes for ‘Best life Skill Message’, ‘Best Corporation in Life Skill Dissemination’? Only a fool depends on Bill Gates and BMGF, UNICEF, DFID etc to buy local airtime to save his own children.

    Non-life saving commercial messages out-number ‘life skill health and social’ messages in the media by 100-1000:1. Can the megabucks advertising billions and CSR schemes/scams be harnessed by an ‘Annual UN/WHO/UNICEF Moral Media Campaign’ for ‘ignorance elimination’ strategies? Let every commercial message carry a ‘piggyback’ ‘Unrelated Life Skill Message’ at no extra charge. Cigarettes and alcohol carry negative messages. Every other commercial product can carry piggyback messages. That ‘Social Message Advert Revolution’ will change the world! Women still get pregnant without taking pre-pregnancy folic acid to help prevent anencephalus and early abortion. Why is this, and malaria and typhoid information not taught in schools?

    Health facilities in Africa are a human right. Our Polio, Onchocerciasis, AIDS adverts, ATM, Insecticide Treated Nets programmes are successes of Rotary, Carter, Bill Gates and the Global Fund which ‘Grant’ Africa Life while Nigerian fathers do not buy ITN for their children? Do our markets, schools or religious houses even have cartoon posters with preventive health messages? Religious leaders should save the body and soul. The media must become morally involved in Medical Ignorance Elimination.

    Professor Ransome-Kuti championed Primary Health Care (PHC) and Clinics -one in every ward 16,400. ‘Saving 1,000,000 lives’ demands 10-20million posters to fill the 1.5million classrooms and 10,000 markets with life skill messages at Coca Cola-like advert saturation level? Politicians readily see the need to make 10m personal portrait posters for votes but will never budget for 10m life skill health posters for 100m+ Nigerians. A picture is worth a 1000 words except in Africa. These PHCs need funds. There is a survey ‘The Sorry State Of PHCs’ in The Nation Tue Oct 9. The government hospitals are also in the 19th Century resulting in ‘Out Of Stock-itis’.

    The Mortality Rates are known but one death in a family is 100% death and pain for the family especially if it is due to preventable diseases like malaria. There is a lack of political love. The ‘Saving 1,000,000 lives’ project notes that a lack of drugs, water, sanitation, happy to work personnel, power and simple equipment are ‘political diseases’ stacked against the ill, malaria-ous child. Delay is deadly! Nigerian children should not suffer, neglect, hardship and difficulty and our passport should not condemn our babies and children to the lowest rung on the world’s mortality rates ladder.

    Annual professionals’ meetings should provide an annual ‘State Of The State, Nation- An Audit’ highlighting solutions because politicians are ignorant of budgetary needs. Shamefully politicians have allocated a mere 6.04% of Nigeria’s 2013 budget to health instead of the 15 to 20% recommended, so how do we ‘Save 1,000,000 lives’?

    Medical management is not nuclear physics. The current ‘save one million lives’ is anticipating need and avoiding greed! It is preventive strategies, posters and media messages, kindness, medicines and equipment and replacements. The ‘work happiness factor’ demands 3 monthly painting, carpentry work, and refurbishment. Training is a special area- newsletters are as valuable as SMS updates. Specific skills may require ‘short course’ rotations through experts.

    The original MDG idea team deserve a Noble Prize in Preventive Medicine for forcing governments to attempt to achieve standards saving millions of lives. start a campaign.

    Much of our problem is from the CINS of politicians – Corruption, Incompetence, Negligence and Selfishness. No medical professional should have to treat malaria without facilities. Delay is death. But politicians have not yet even realised the tremendous value of water, for sanitation and thirst, as a human right.

    Persuade the politicians that the solution to Nigeria’s malaria and other health problems lies not in more multimillion naira Ladi Kwali Hall conferences and four wheel drive vehicles but in funding PHCs, and hospitals. The required 16,400 PHCs need N5m each per annum for running costs. Simple.

    Finally: BREAKING News: ‘Nigeria’s Senate President calls for EMERGENCY IN HEALTH SECTOR’ but it is too late for too many dead babies.