A Villarreal fan threw a banana at Dani Alves, so he ate it before taking his corner kick

It's been a very emotional few days for Barcelona as they had to travel to Villarreal and try to keep their title hopes alive just two days after the death of former manager Tito Vilanova. Given the circumstances, it was understandable that Barca fell behind 2-0 before the hour mark, but then they mounted a comeback and in the midst of that, Dani Alves showed that he was not in the mood to let any abusive fans get to him. A Villarreal own goal in the 65th minute made it 2-1 and gave Barcelona something to build on. About 10 minutes later, Barca won a corner kick and Dani Alves went to take it. Villarreal fans threw things at him once he got near them — one of those items being a banana. When Alves spotted it laying on the pitch, he casually picked it up, peeled it, took a big bite, tossed the peel aside and took his corner kick. As cool as can be. Two minutes later, Villarreal scored another own goal to make it 2-2 and Lionel Messi came through with a goal in the 83rd minute to give Barca a 3-2 that will undoubtedly be dedicated to Tito Vilanova. Sadly, racist abuse — including bananas and monkey sounds — has become old hat to Dani Alves. In January of last year, he said, "I go through this constantly in all the grounds I go to. It is a shame, as fans can like you or not, and there can be heated moments within games, but the crowd should just support their own team. [...] I have been here [in Spain] for ten years and since the first year this kind of thing has happened. There are worse grounds [than the Bernabeu]. It happens all over Spain. I lived through it at Sevilla. Until action is taken, nothing will be fixed." Following the Villarreal match, Alves expanded on his previous comments with an explanation of his personal approach to racism in the absence of institutional change. From the AP: "We have suffered this in Spain for some time," Alves said. "You have to take it with a dose of humor. We aren't going to change things easily. "If you don't give it importance, they don't achieve their objective." Hopefully one day soon the powers that be will provide the action Alves and so many others have called for. But until then, Dani Alves will eat your nutritious bananas and use that fuel to help him beat your team. As if Alves' reaction in the moment wasn't brilliant enough, Neymar, his teammate at both Barcelona and the Brazilian national team, later posted a photo on Instagramof himself holding a banana while his young son, David Lucca, hugged a banana stuffed toy. Neymar's caption to the picture: "We are all monkeys."

David Moyes has agreed to Man United pay off term

David Moyes has reached agreement with Manchester United over the size of his pay-off, England’s League Managers’ Association announced Friday. United sacked Moyes on Tuesday, just 10 months into the Scot’s six-year contract. The past few days have seen seen Moyes and LMA representatives holding talks with faltering Premier League champions United and on Friday the LMA said terms had been agreed.

“The League Managers Association and Manchester United are pleased to confirm that terms of settlement have been agreed between the Club and David Moyes in respect of the termination of his employment,” the LMA said in a statement. “A settlement agreement is in the process of being finalised. No further comment will be made in relation to this issue.”

The LMA statement did not say how much Moyes, the man retired former United manager Alex Ferguson wanted to replace him after he stood down at the end of last season, would be paid as part of his severance deal. Following Moyes’s sacking, there were widespread reports in the British media that his pay-off would be capped at less than £5 million out of his £30 million deal ($50m, 36m euros). It was reported that he had lost out on a larger compensation package through an ‘ejector seat’ clause in his contract, limiting his money to 12 months’ salary if the club failed to qualify for the Champions League, something that was confirmed after United’s 2-0 defeat by Everton. United are currently seventh in the table and, having been knocked out of both domestic cups and the Champions League, will endure a trophy-less season. This campaign will see United record their worst points total in the Premier League era and their highest number of home defeats since 1978 — including 3-0 drubbings by bitter rivals Liverpool and Manchester City.

Microsoft acquires Nokia devices, services business

Microsoft Corp has announced it has completed its acquisition of the Nokia Devices which allows the two companies to come together as one to deliver a family of devices and services that will delight consumers and empower businesses. Already, the acquisition has been approved by Nokia shareholders and by governmental regulatory agencies around the world. Accordingly, the completion of the acquisition marks the first step in bringing these two organizations together as one team. As part of the transaction, Microsoft will honour all existing Nokia customer warranties for existing devices.

Reacting on the new development, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, said that, “Today we welcome the Nokia Devices and Services business to our family. The mobile capabilities and assets they bring will advance our transformation. “Together with our partners, we remain focused on delivering innovation more rapidly in our mobile-first, cloud-first world.” Reporting to Nadella is former Nokia President and CEO Stephen Elop, who will serve as executive vice president of the Microsoft Devices Group, overseeing an expanded devices business that includes Lumia smartphones and tablets, Nokia mobile phones, Xbox hardware, Surface, Perceptive Pixel (PPI) products and accessories.

Microsoft welcomes personnel with deep industry experience in more than 130 sites across 50 countries worldwide, including several factories that design, develop, manufacture, market and sell a broad portfolio of innovative smart devices, mobile phones and services. Windows Phone is the fastest-growing ecosystem in the smartphone market, and its portfolio of award-winning devices continues to expand. It would be recalled that in the fourth quarter of 2013, according to IDC, Windows Phone reinforced its position as a top three smartphone operating system and was the fastest-growing platform among the leading operating systems with 91 percent year-over-year gain. With the Nokia mobile phone business, Microsoft will target the affordable mobile devices market, a $50 billion annual opportunity, delivering the first mobile experience to the next billion people while introducing Microsoft services to new customers around the world. Microsoft will continue to deliver new value and opportunity, and it will work closely with a range of hardware partners, developers, operators, distributors and retailers, providing platforms, tools, applications and services that enable them to make exceptional devices.

With a deeper understanding of hardware and software working as one, the company will strengthen and grow demand for Windows devices overall. Vanguard

Boy survives five-hour flight in airplane wheel well

A 16-year-old boy was lucky to be alive Monday after surviving a flight from California to Hawaii in the wheel well of an airplane, US media reported. The young stowaway endured freezing temperatures and a lack of oxygen aboard the five-and-a-half hour Hawaiian Airlines flight, which reached an altitude of some 38,000 feet, an FBI official told the Los Angeles Times. “How he survived, I don’t know. It’s a miracle,” FBI spokesman Tom Simon told the daily following the teen’s harrowing journey halfway across the Pacific Ocean.

Security video from the Mineta International Airport in San Jose showed the youth hopping a fence and making his way to Hawaiian Airlines Flight 45, where he climbed, undetected, into the wheel well of the aircraft. With oxygen scarce and temperatures well below freezing, Simon said the boy appears to have been unconscious “for pretty much the entire” flight.

The aircraft landed Sunday mid-morning at Maui’s Kahului Airport, and the boy, who did not regain consciousness for another hour, woke up, he hopped down onto the tarmac. Hawaiian Airlines personnel at that point noticed the youth on a airport ramp and notified security, the newspaper wrote. Despite the security breach that allowed him to reach the plane, there was no indication that boy posed a threat to the airline, and he has not been charged with a crime, report said. While it is not unheard of, it is extremely rare to survive a flight in the wheel well of an aircraft. Many who try end up freezing to death or succumbing from a lack of oxygen. In one recent such case, the body of a 26-year-old stowaway was found crumpled on a suburban London street in 2012, after he apparently climbed aboard a British Airways plane in Angola and fell from the wheel well as the plane prepared to land at Heathrow Airport.

Who acted as Jesus in the popular 1979 Jesus film.

Brian Deacon did

Brian Deacon (born 13 February 1949) is a British actor. Born in Oxford, he trained at the Oxford Youth Theatre. He appeared with his brother Eric Deacon in the Peter Green away film, A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), as Heumac in The Feathered Serpent(1976, 1978) and as Frank Milesin the TV series Lillie in 1978. In 1979 he starred in the title role of Jesus. This film was made by an evangelical organization, the Jesus Film Project. He has been married twice: first time to Rula Lenska (1977–1987), with whom he had a daughter Lara Deacon, and the second time to Natalie Bloch (1998 to present).

Car appears suddenly on a Russia road

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Nigeria refs to officiate in world cup by 2018

FIFA referees assistant programme instructor, Lee Kim Chong stated in Abuja that Nigeria referees could get the chance to officiate in their first ever world cup in 2018. Kim Chong said that with the kind of programme the Nigeria referees embarked upon, they are most like to finally make the cut for the list of referees for the world cup. Chong who was the center referee when the Super Eagles won Zambia 2-1 to lift 1994 Nations Cup in Tunisia also pointed that unlike before Nigeria now has more qualified referees who are called to officiate at international competitions.

He said “Nigeria is coming up gradually and has many referees who are fit. This year alone, a good number of them have officiated at CAF organized competitions and they did well. “There are lots of potentials who I have seen myself and I know that before 2018, some of them will be mature to be selected to officiate at the world cup. I have been in Nigeria severally; I was in Aba when I officiated Enyimba match. I have also been involved in some qualifiers involving Nigeria. Chong bemoaned lack of tactical and technological know how by some Nigeria referees but implored them to brace up to square up with challenges ahead.

UK scientists have challenged the idea that the ‪Titanic ‬was unlucky

UK scientists have challenged the idea that the Titanic was unlucky for sailing in a year when there were an exceptional number of icebergs in the North Atlantic.
The ocean liner sank on its maiden voyage 102 years ago, with the loss of more than 1,500 lives.
The new analysis found the iceberg risk was high in 1912, but not extreme, as has previously been suggested.
The work by a University of Sheffield team appears in the journal Weather.
The iceberg which sank the Titanic was spotted just before midnight on 14 April 1912, some 500m away. Despite quick action to slow the ship and turn to port, it wasn't enough. About 100m of the hull buckled below the waterline and the liner sank in just two-and-a-half hours.
Reports of unusually bad ice in the North Atlantic started to emerge shortly after the disaster. At the time, US officials told the New York Times that a warm winter had caused "an enormously large crop of icebergs".

In the days leading up to that fateful night, the prevailing winds and temperatures, assisted by ocean currents, had conspired to transport icebergs and sea-ice further south than was normal at that time of year.
This iceberg, with a red streak of paint along its side, may have been the one that sank RMS Titanic
All this has led researchers to seek explanations for a supposedly awesome flotilla of ice in the North Atlantic. One US group has proposed that an unusually close approach to Earth by the Mooncaused abnormally high tides in the winter of 1912, which in turn encouraged a greater than usual amount of ice to break off Greenland's glaciers.
Lightoller's tale
"From the moment we left Belfast we had marvellous weather.

Even when we got out on the western ocean - the Atlantic as you probably know it - it was as smooth as the proverbial millpond. Not a breath of wind and the sea like a sheet of glass.
In any other circumstances those conditions would have been ideal. But anyone with experience of ice at sea knows that those very conditions, and the moonless night, only render the detection of icebergs more difficult and call for the additional alertness of both officers and men."

-Charles Herbert Lightoller, second officer, RMS Titanic
I Was There - Charles Lightoller
Survivors of the Titanic - BBC Archive

In the latest study, Grant Bigg and David Wilton from Sheffield University's department of geography studied data collected by the US Coast Guard and extending back to 1900.
Observational techniques have changed over the years, complicating comparisons. But the researchers say that a good measure of the volume of icebergs is given by the number that passed the circle of latitude at 48 degrees North, across an area of ocean stretching from Newfoundland to about 40 degrees West.
They found that the record showed great variation in the volume of ice from year to year. And although the iceberg flux from Greenland in 1912 was indeed high, with 1,038 icebergs observed crossing the 48th parallel, this number was neither unusual nor unprecedented.
In the surrounding decades, from 1901-1920, there were five years with at least 700 icebergs crossing 48 degrees North. And the coast guard record shows there was a larger flux of icebergs in 1909 than in 1912.
Prof Bigg told BBC News the flux was at the "large end" but "not outstandingly large" for the first 60-70 years of the 20th Century.
Using the coast guard record and other data, the researchers also developed a computer simulation to examine the likely trajectories of icebergs in 1912. Using this model, they were able to trace the likely origin of the iceberg that sank the Titanic to southwest Greenland.
They suggest that it broke off a glacier in that area in early autumn 1911 and started off as a floating hunk measuring roughly 500m long and 300m deep.

Its mass by mid-April 1912 - as predicted by the computer model - agrees very closely with the size of an iceberg bearing a streak of red paint that was photographed by Captain William Squares DeCarteret of the Minia, a ship that joined the search for bodies and wreckage at the site of the disaster.

Sir Alex Ferguson is now a lecturer at Harvard University

The former Manchester Unitedmanager Sir Alex Ferguson has agreed to take up a "long-term teaching position" in executive education at Harvard.
The 72-year-old, who left his post as manager at Old Trafford last summer after 26 years in charge, will lecture in the Ivy League University's new programme entitled The Business of Entertainment, Media and Sports, starting in May. It comes less than seven months after Ferguson's blueprint for managerial success was included in the October edition of Harvard Business Review.
"I'm delighted to have the opportunity and privilege to contribute to such a respected centre of excellence," Ferguson said.

"The time I have already spent at Harvard has been a stimulating experience and I look forward to developing my relationship and activities with the students, faculty and friends of the Harvard Business School community."

Ferguson conducted a series of interviews with the Harvard Business School professor Anita Elberse in 2012, outlining what he believed to be the eight key elements of his old job including "Match the method to the moment" and "Rely on the power of observation".
"We look forward to welcoming Sir Alex Fergusonon the HBS campus to share his remarkable leadership journey, and contribute to our Executive Education participants' ability to make a profound difference in the world," Elberse said.
The programme on The Business of Entertainment, Media and Sports will take place from 7-10 May. Manchester United are due to face Hull City in their last game of the season at Old Trafford on 6 May but the club are confident Ferguson's new role will not distract him from his duties as a club director and ambassador.

You don't need a tower anymore tech does the drying

Have you ever thought about a device or machine that could do your towelling for youafter bath?
A New York based start-up has developed body dryer that dry your body after bath.
Wondering how it works? Simple. After having your bath, you can just switch it on by the side and then step on it. It then blows breeze upward to dry your wet body. It works pretty much like the hand dryer you see around so is really nothing out of this world.

The remarkable thing is that it is quite portable unlike the previous body dryers that is built like an enclosed jacuzzi. Sounds like it is finally going to make you so indolent right? Well, perhaps not. It is built to to replace bacteria filled and environmentally harmful bathroom towels.
The start Up is currently raising funds to produce in large quantity. It has raised up to $36,206 already out of its $50,000 target. The body dryer should go for around $250. So no more towelling

Samsung now have windows phone

Samsung Ativ SE, a windows based OS phone is now official. The device running on Windows Phone 8 is a 5-inch 1080p display, a 13-megapixel camera, and an unspecified 2.3GHz quad-core processor (most likely the Snapdragon 800) with 2GB of RAM. It also has a 2,600mAh battery, 16GB of storage, and microSD card expansion.

Though Samsung is yet to formally announce the phone, but Verizon has began to take pre-orders. Verizon is even offering to give away one free for any pre-order. The device cost $599.99 (without contract) on their site. Verizon also promises to start shipping as from April 12th.

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I will not take salary if elected governor

Mr Opeyemi Bamidele Labour party governorship candidate in the June 21 election in Ekiti, on Thursday vowed not to collect salaries and emoluments throughout his four year tenure if elected.
He made the vow while campaigning at Igede-Ekiti in Irepodun/ Ifelodun Local Government Area.

Bamidele, a member of the House of Representatives, said he would rather open a special account for his salaries and emoluments to cater for the vulnerable persons in the society.

He said that his salaries and allowances at the National Assembly were being utilised to give succour to the needy and vulnerable in the society.
“I have been blessed by God in all my areas of endeavours.
“The best way to appreciate God is to give back to the people,’’ he said.
Bamidele also pledged not to seek a second term if he wins the election, adding that four years was enough for anyone to implement his programmes.
He said that though the current administration in the state had done its best, he was in the race to do better things for the people. (NAN)

Facebook Owner Mark Zuckerberg earn $1 a year!!!

Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook guy.
Well, you will find it interesting that he actually earns $1 as salary for the whole of last year. Yes. $1. You will wonder, what the heck! Well its nothing out of this world. Steve Jobs did the same as the CEO of Apple.

In case you are in doubt, a reportby SEC filed on Monday confirms this. Though he is earning that little in salary is net worth is estimated at $27 billion.
Lets face it. Why do you think he is it earning that almost nothing in such a big company. Share below.

3D printing

You’ve heard of 3D printing from newscasters and journalists, astonished at what they’ve witnessed. A machine reminiscent of the Star Trek Replicator, something magical that can create objects out of thin air. It can “print” in plastic, metal, nylon, and over a hundred other materials. It can be used for making nonsensical little models like the over-printed Yoda, yet it can also print manufacturing prototypes, end user products, quasi-legal guns, aircraft engine partsand even human organs using a person’s own cells.

Also known as "additive manufacturing" or "stereo lithography," 3D printing is often depicted as a mysterious and seemingly magic process.
3D printing turns computer models into real physical things. It takes different materials, from biodegradeable plastic filament PLA to ABS plastic to Nylon, melts it into thin layers onto a surface, moves up and prints another layer. After layer upon layer, you are left with a physical object.

Missing Malaysia plane search classified as criminal investigation

Khalid Abu-Bakar, Malaysian Inspector General of Police, said on Wednesday that the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was a criminal investigation.
He said in Kuala Lumpur at a news conference at the Royal Malaysian Police Quality and Innovation Seminar 2014, that some details could not be revealed at the moment because it could impact on a future prosecution.

Abu-Bakar said police were investigating based on the four areas of focus which included personal and psychological problems, sabotage and hijacking.
“You have to understand that there are things we cannot share as it is a criminal investigation but we are investigating based on the four areas of focus,” he said.

Abu-Bakar said until now there had been about 170 statements recorded from family members of the passengers and crew on board the missing jetliner.
He said the backgrounds of the 227 passengers, two-thirds of whom were from China, had been checked by local and international investigators and cleared of the four possible scenarios of sabotage, hijacking, personal or psychological problems.
Abu Bakar said police were also investigating the cargo and food served on the plane to eliminate the possibility of poisoning of passengers and crew.
He said investigators were trawling through the backgrounds of 53 year old pilot, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, and co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, along with examining whether a passenger could have hijacked the plane and flown it to the remote southern Indian Ocean.
He said, however, an accident had also not been fully ruled out.

Abu-Bakar said the investigators had some clues of what happened, but they would not reveal anything as the investigation was ongoing.
He stressed that “Investigations may go on and on but we have to clear every little thing, at the end of the investigations, we may not even know the real cause. We may not even know the reason for this incident,’’ he said.

Snake disrupts NYSC passing-out parade

A snake on Tuesday disrupted the passing-out parade of the NYSC Batch “A” at the Orientation Camp at Tsafe in Zamfara, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.
The snake, according to eyewitnesses, might have come from one of the dilapidated structures at the camp and could have been in search of shelter or food.
The eyewitnesses said the snake tried to make its way to the platform where special guests at the occasion were seated during the course of the ceremony.
Some of the corps members, as well as some of the special guests, took to their heels to avoid the reptile.
However, some of the corps members ran after the snake to kill it, using sticks and their boots.

BBM in Windows

During the Mobile World Congress the CEO of BlackBerry, John Chen already revealed thatBBM will be hitting Microsoft's Windows Phone, even though there was no specific date was stated then.
Now, BlackBerry's CEO John Chen has reaffirmed that the company's plan for Windows Phone smartphones and confirmed that the BBM app will be released by second quarter (May or June) this year. Chen added that the instant messaging service will be released for the Nokia X platforms and the app will come preloaded on some Nokia devices in selective markets. Chen also indicated that BBM will come preinstalled on some Lumia devices, once the app is released for the Windows Phone platform.
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