Record 65 Million Displaced by Global Conflicts-United Nations.

                                  

More people are on the run than ever before in recorded history, the United Nations said in a report released Monday.

They include those fleeing marauders in South Sudan, drug gangs in Central America, and the Islamic State in the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Falluja. While most are displaced within their own countries, an unprecedented number are seeking political asylum in the world’s rich countries. Nearly 100,000 are children who have attempted the journey alone.

All told, the number of people displaced by conflict is estimated to exceed 65 million, more than the population of Britain.

The new figures, part of the United Nations refugee agency’s Global Trends Report, come as hostility is surging toward migrants and refugees in the Western countries where they are seeking sanctuary and relief.

The European Union has shown signs of fracturing over how to handle the influx of people crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

The United Nations high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi,expressed alarm on Sunday about what he described as a “climate of xenophobia that is very worrying in today’s Europe.”

By the numbers:

• 65.3 million:people are displaced by conflict worldwide

• Nearly 41 million:of them are displaced inside their own countries 98,400

• 3.2 million refugees have applied for asylum in industrialized countries.

UK supports smart agriculture in Zambia with $36m

                               
Agriculture is very important to Zambia, accounting for over 18 percent of GDP and more than 60 percent of jobs. Despite its importance, the agricultural sector is not living up to its potential. More can be done to improve productivity and livelihoods of farmers, 78 percent of whom are women, as well as build resilience to climate change. The United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) is giving out £25 million ($36 million) to Zambia to be able to achieve these.
“With Zambia’s great untapped agriculture potential, increasing the productivity and incomes of farmers is an effective way to support inclusive growth and reduce poverty,” said Ms Emma Donnelly, Head of DFID Zambia. According to her, “by increasing farmers’ ability to withstand droughts in the face of increased temperatures, reduced rainfall and more extreme weather, DFID will help farmers to maintain their standard of living even during dry spells.”
Extreme weather phenomenon El Nino had worsened drought in some parts of Africa, especially the southern part, with countries like Zimbabwe and South Africa seeing agricultural productivity drop to abysmally low levels. Zambia’s corn, however, defied El Nino as production of the staple increased following improved rains that ended months of drought. During the drought, many farmers were already considering reducing the amount of maize they plant and switching to faster-growing crops such as beans that can better survive poor weather.
The DFID will now work with the Conservation Farming Unit (CFU), a not-for-profit Zambian organisation established to promote climate smart agricultural practices and policies, to support rural Zambian farming families to improve livelihoods through building their resilience to climate change.
The programme which has been named ‘Climate Smart Agriculture Zambia (CSAZ)’ will run for five years – 2016 to 2020. The DFID-funded programme is expected to benefit more than 600,000 small and medium scale farmers.
In the programme, farmers will be trained in climate smart agriculture techniques, enabling them to understand the steps involved in applying the technology and the benefits they would get. The programme will also facilitate commercial relationships between farmers and private sector providers of agricultural services and inputs such as use of machinery and herbicides – both of which are critical for the adoption and sustainability of climate smart agriculture practices.
Climate smart agriculture has the potential to bring about huge benefits to women farmers such as reductions in labour demand. This enables women to grow alternative crops used either for home consumption or selling on the market to improve incomes for the households.

Staying Mentally Active During Unemployment

                                 
In some ways, the problems with unemployment are more mental than physical. Unemployment is a truly lousy mental experience. It's dull, frustrating, restrictive, worrying and incredibly irritating. Everything seems to be stuck. There's a way out of that mindset, though.
This is an area where you can beat unemployment. It might deprive you of a job, but it can't stop you from thinking. You can actually think your way out of the mindset and out of unemployment while you're at it. You have all the materials you need, in your mind.
The 'unemployed' mindset is almost entirely negative. It works on things you can't do, things you don't have, and is self aggravating. It makes even small things much more annoying than they would be otherwise. Sound familiar?
This is the weak spot in the unemployed mindset. That negative stuff isn't the whole story, or anything like it. It's misrepresentation of the situation. If anything, it just emphasizes the fact that you're thinking about things that go nowhere. If you've ever had a mental block, where you just couldn't think your way through something, it's exactly the same situation.

• Remember trying hard repeatedly to do something that just didn't work?
• Remember the mental immovability, like the problem was going to go on forever?
• Did it turn out that both the methods you were using and the mindset were the problem?
• Couldn't see the obvious, because you weren't thinking about it?
• Was the situation made worse because you didn't get mentally active and change your methods, or get information you needed to solve the problem?

Bingo. That's the story with the 'unemployed' mindset. That thinking just aggravates the problem. The negatives monopolize the mind. Hardly anything else gets considered. That's what you have to beat, and it's fun to do.
Change your mind, change your methods
If you've been stuck in a mental rut, if you're making habitual reactions to situations, you need to get out of that routine, fast. When unemployed, a lot of things are habitual. Even job applications become routines, rather than something you can get really enthusiastic about.
One track minded approaches to unemployment are dangerous. They're very unproductive. You need to change how you do things, and how you see and think about opportunities. It's quite possible that you're even going for the wrong jobs. If you only go for the same jobs, you're literally missing all other possible options. There are only going to be so many of those jobs advertised, and if you don't have options, you drastically reduce the odds of getting a job.
Trying new things is one of the most important changes to the unemployed mindset. You don't have any preconceived reservations or doubts. You could even discover a whole new career path, completely out of the unemployment mold. You could get training in a new field. You could go for jobs in new areas where your experience and skills apply, but in different fields.
Change your mind, change your methods, and change your life. You'll have the distinct pleasure of beating unemployment.

Source: www.cvtips.com

4 Key Principles For Finding Your Path to Greatness

                                  
Success is defined in different ways by different people, but more and more it has become synonymous with money and status.
Real success, however, is less about results or a bottom line, and more about the process of achieving goals an dreams.

Many business people today are overwhelmed by the need to maintain results-driven success.  Once we decide that the results are all that matter, then success comes at high price.  We find ourselves making sacrifices and compromises that were once unacceptable.  We trade today for some future payoff.  When that payoff comes, we realize it can never be enough.  And, when the results we work so hard for don’t materialize, we label that failure.  It’s an impossible model to sustain for a lifetime.
Fortunately, there is another way.
In my book, Own YOUR Success, I contrast results-driven success with a much more balanced approach.  The key principles are ones that anyone can put into practice immediately.

The first principle is Attain Belief in Yourself, which I break into five keys:

a. Accept the truth. Acknowledging the person you are today is the key to becoming the person you want to be and, ultimately, to attaining belief in yourself.  There is a big difference between failing and not getting the results we want.  Instead of seeing failure, see opportunities for growth and change.
b. Speak the truth. Be honest about your past behaviors and habits.  While it may be difficult to acknowledge them, burying those parts of our lives makes us feel like victims, amplifying our fear and pain.  Shedding light on the past, by talking with a trusted friend or professional, frees us.
c. Breathe through the truth. Avoid reacting from a place of pain or anger – no matter how much you believe you are right.   Be open to changing your perspective.  Treat yourself lovingly.  Do not self-destruct.
d. Process the truth. Give yourself time and space to find your equilibrium.  Developing belief in yourself means gaining confidence that will lead to a stronger foundation.
e. Create a plan based on the truth. Changing entrenched behaviors and mindsets takes time, and sometimes they return.  Stay strong.  Continue to believe and actively engage in this process.  Define how you want to live your life from where you are right now.

The second principle is Act with Courage and Integrity.

Whether you are the CEO, in middle management, or in an entry-level position, when you act with courage and integrity, it inspires others to do the same.  A big part of that is appreciating all people and the selfless acts and sacrifices they make every day.

The third principle is Create Your Prizefighter Day – Do Great Things!

Each day set three attainable activity goals: one personal, one professional, and one to help others.  By taking action in these three areas every day, you make each day victorious.  The victory is not in the results, but in the actions themselves.  Even if what you do doesn’t turn out perfectly, as you may have hoped, the experience of accomplishment every day is a victory.

The fourth principle is Create a Living Legacy.Surrender to a cause greater than yourself.  Find your passion and live it every day.  Work diligently toward your goal.  Fight for what you believe in despite the obstacles in your path.  Don’t wait to leave a legacy after you're gone. Leave that legacy every day.

Quotes Of Greatness

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world, but in being able to remake ourselves. – Mahatma Gandhi
“Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.” – Henry Ward Beecher
“All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.” – James F. Cooper
“Man’s greatness lies in his power of thought.” – Blaise Pascal

Written by Ben Newman

Ben Newman is a distinguished author, international speaker and coach from St. Louis. In 2012, The Napoleon Hill Foundation recognized Ben as one of the TOP 51 speakers & thought leaders in the World! Ben is a 4-time author and his latest book, Own YOUR Success: The Power to Choose Greatness and Make Everyday Victorious is a #1 Business Best-Seller and was ranked #2 in August 2012 by 800.CEO.READ for “What Corporate America is Reading.”. He is also the author of Fight the Good Fight, Pocket Truths for Success & Pocket Principles for the Insurancebusiness

U.S. Senate fails to approve tougher gun control laws after Orlando massacre

                            
The GOP-controlled Senate failed to pass legislation aimed at keeping suspected terrorists from buying guns and tightening background checks, shrugging off the worst mass shooting in U.S. history with more inaction.
Barely a week after the Orlando nightclub massacre that killed 49 people and just days after a 15-hour filibuster from Democrats, it felt like “Groundhog Day” on Capitol Hill, with votes falling mostly along party lines to defeat four gun control measures
“What am I going to tell 49 grieving families? What am I going to tell those who are still in the hospital fighting for their lives?” said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.). “Sadly, what I’m going to have to tell them is the NRA won again.”
Democrats once again saw their legislation to bar suspected terrorists on the federal “no fly” list from buying guns get just 47 out of the needed 60 votes. It was similar to the tally on nearly identical legislation in early December, after the terror attack in San Bernardino, Calif.

Source: www.nydailynews.com

7 Ways you can Climb “Out of the Box”

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “think outside the box.” It’s become a cliché among Americans today. We must remember, however, that clichés can be true, even if they’re overused. In this case, “think outside the box” contains a timeless truth that leaders must understand if they wish to remain effective in their organizations.
In short, boxes represent conventional thinking: they are assumptions that confine our creativity and ability to see new options. Of course, some assumptions are necessary. We can’t make it through a day without assuming the traffic light will turn green or that our desk chair will support us when we sit down. But when assumptions become rigid (or, like a box, closed), they can keep us from seeing new possibilities or perspectives.
Take some common assumptions for a moment. Did you know that more people are killed each year by hippos than bears, lions or sharks? It’s true, but we don’t think of hippos as deadly creatures like we do sharks. What’s more, coconuts kill more people each year than sharks. In fact, you are fifteen times more likely to be killed by falling coconuts than by sharks. So why don’t we fear coconuts as much as we fear sharks? Because we don’t view them as deadly. It’s an assumption. And in the same way, we’ve been paranoid about sharks ever since we saw the movie Jaws. (Thank you, Stephen Spielberg.)

So How Do We Break Out of Our Box?

Let me offer some simple suggestions you can employ today to stay out of the box:

1. Find mentors outside of your industry.
   From time to time, choose people to meet with and ask questions of who work completely outside of your world. They will enable you to see new angles, as they’re not confined by your boxes.

2. Question everything.
   Reflect on all the realities and routines you embrace everyday—and begin to question all of them. You may hold on to some, but by questioning why you do them, you may find better ideas.

3. Read books outside your normal field of interest.
   This one has helped me every year. I will pick up a book that I wouldn’t normally consume and power through it. If nothing else, it clears the cobwebs of my current thinking and can give me new perspectives.

4. Learn something new everyday.
   This enables you to stay open and teachable, to keep your mind soft and receptive to new ideas and new ways of thinking. Deliberately pursue educating yourself in some new topic or trend, and tell someone what you learned.

5. Do something strange.
   I realize this sounds crazy—but sometimes doing something out of the ordinary can get you out of the box. When Dr. Seuss got stuck while writing, he would go to a secret closet filled with hundreds of hats and wear them till words came.

6. Learn to combine unrelated ideas.
   Real creativity is usually about combining two existing ideas to make a new one. Steve Jobs said, “Creativity is simply connecting things.” Try this exercise: jot down two completely unrelated objects and discover what they could do together.

7. Attempt a goal that’s big and different.
   Winston Churchill said, “Change is as good as rest.” This simply means by changing what you’re doing, it’s like resting your mind. I have found if I assign myself a project or goal that is unique and gigantic, it pushes my mind in new ways.

 Written by Tim Elmore
www.growingleaders.com/habitudes

The Difference Between Living Life And Not

                                          

Not everyone has passion. Not everyone is moved emotionally by what they do. And, that’s extremely unfortunate. But fortunately, you are not like everyone else.

The winning organizations in every industry are filled with passionate, vocal, active people (also, we have more fun doing what we do). To us, it isn’t even really ‘work’ in the sense that it flows naturally and feels more like creative freedom.

I think that truly passionate people are not understood by much of the world. I’ll give you one example: I don’t watch TV anymore. I tell people this, and it feels like many of them mentally file me in a category of being weird or socially deviant. Most people cannot fathom a world without television.

This is unfortunate, and altogether sad. We are at such an incredible turning point in society, and the world is changing for the better due to people with passion. Think about this:

 Clay Shirky told me something that is stricking.

"If you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project–every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in–that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it’s a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it’s the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought.

And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that’s 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus. People asking, “Where do they find the time?” when they’re looking at things like Wikipedia don’t understand how tiny that entire project is, as a carve-out of this asset that’s finally being dragged into what Tim calls an architecture of participation."

The world is shifting, and where before intellectuals used to be isolated and work on projects in a vacuum, now new social tools are allowing them to work together on deep projects that benefit everyone. Imagine, a group of complete strangers working together to create something incredible, inspiring and useful – all for free, and all due to pure internal motivation and desire to help the world.

Are you a part of a global project like Wikipedia? Or, global conversations about what you do professionally or are interested in personally? If not, you should be – the tools exist to interact with fantastic minds in our world, learn from them, and get better results and get inspiration for whatever you are doing.

Sorry if you’re a TV watcher, but if you watch even more than a tiny amount, it is a waste of life. I don’t mean to offend you, but really think about it: you are given a fleeting amount of time to physically exist on this planet and do something to change things for the better, and then you are gone. By watching TV for endless hours, you’re squandering life, the most previous gift there is.
 By watching TV you make the ultimate sacrifice – you could be reading, writing, making art, or actually interacting with your friends, family and other professionals in your industry. Would you rather look back at a life spent passively absorbing nonsense, or one spent changing the world for the better and creating what inspires you. The choice is obvious.

I feel like most of you here don’t waste your life passively, so this post isn’t really for you. You’re already motivated and inspired. Forward this to a friend who isn’t.

Here’s what too many in society do:

• Get up in the morning
• Work, thinking inside the lines the entire day
• Come home
• Watch TV
• Sleep

It is an altogether unremarkable existence. And, those people probably produce ultimately unremarkable results and lead average lives.

If you wake up in the morning and aren’t inspired every day to throw yourself into your work and life with 100% passion, you’re not living it. I don’t understand how someone can live even one day like this.

Perhaps they’re in the wrong field, or have lost that creative spark. But regardless, there is no other way for truly intelligent people to live other than taking an active, passionate role in life and pouring their soul into something that inspires them.

The planet is billions of years old, and your lifespan is merely a cosmic blink. There’s not a day to waste.

Written by Adam Singer

Follow me at www.twitter.com @AdamSinger

Defilement:67-yr-old Arrested for Rape Of 6-yr-old

                                            
A 67 years old man, Yahaya Umar has been arrested for allegedly defiling a six-year-old minor in Kaduna.
Mother of the minor, Hindatu Mohammed ,who narrated the incident to journalists, said the minor was defiled last Monday, around 1pm, adding “Today is exactly one week at Tudun Wada, Soba street hospital line.
“After my daughter, Safiya, six-year-old, returned from school, I sent her to go and buy detergent for me, but she didn’t return early as expected. And I was worried and one boy came to my house to inform me that my daughter had been defiled. It was a woman who was passing by that caught the oldman in the act in an uncompleted building within the area and she called out for help, which led to his arrest
“So I went out to see for myself and was accompanied by my co-wife. We went to the police station at TudunNupawa,” she said.
He said, on reaching the police station , she learnt that her daughter has been taken to hospital to conduct test to ascertain if she was actually rape She said, upon return it was confirm that rape actually happen
“And I was asked to pay N500 for fuel which I did. I am so afraid that she might be infected with HIV/AID and I was told that after the doctor’s investigation that it was discovered that she has been raped earlier by another person before that of the 67-year-old man And it was our neighbour, Mohammed Auwal, my daughter identified and the police have already arrested him. They are both in police custody.
According to her, at first she didn’t even know that the other person had been raping her daughter because they were neighbours.   “I am calling on the security agencies to give my daughter justice because now people are calling asking me to forgive them,”she said.

Ambode signs historic deal with Dubai

                                              
                                                  Akinwunmi Ambode

The Lagos State Government and the City of Dubai on Monday entered into a historic partnership that will see Lagos emerge as the first Smart City in Africa.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the Lagos Smart City was signed at the Emirate Towers, Dubai by the Lagos State Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice, Mr. Adeniji Kazeem and the Chief Executive Officer of Smart City Dubai LLC, Mr. Jabber Bin Hafez.
The signing of the MOU, which would make Lagos the home of the very first Smart City in Africa, was witnessed by the Chairman of Dubai Holdings, His Excellency, Ahmad Bin Byat who is also the Deputy Prime Minister and the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode.
A Smart City is a growing concept that draws from the success of Dubai’s innovative knowledge-based industry clusters to empower business growth for companies and knowledge workers all over the world.
Governor Ambode in a statement signed on Tuesday by the State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Steve Ayorinde, said that the Smart City (Lagos) is expected to bring multi-billion dollars investments to the State, create thousands of jobs and transform the Ibeju-Lekki axis in particular and the entire Lagos State in general.
“This is a deliberate attempt by us to establish a strong convergence between technology, economic development and governance.
“The MOU is between Lagos State Government and Dubai Holdings, LLC, owners of Smart City (Dubai) to develop a sustainable, smart, globally connected knowledge-based communities that drive knowledge economy,” Governor Ambode said.
The Governor stated that the collaboration is part of the larger vision to make Lagos safer, cleaner and more prosperous.