how bomb changed everything.......stories

It was HG Wells who first conceived the atomic bomb and even gave it its name, in a 1914 novel called The World Set Free. Wells imagined a uranium-based hand grenade that “would continue to explode indefinitely”. He may have got the shape and size wrong, but it became a reality in his lifetime – just over 30 years later. Popular culture immediately began to grapple with its power. In Japan, where the US military dropped atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War Two, atomic energy created or awakened monsters. The original Godzilla (1954) referenced a real event when a Japanese trawler crew suffered radiation after a Pacific Ocean bomb test. The firestorm of destruction wrought on Tokyo in that film looked like documentary, not fiction. The same year saw Hollywood make Them! – a movie in which bomb testing creates giant radioactive ants which go on the rampage in Los Angeles. The original Godzilla fillm (1954) (Credit: Credit: AF Archive/Alamy) The monster hungry for destruction in Godzilla (1954) was a direct result of nuclear tests in the Pacific (Credit: AF Archive/Alamy) Radiation-triggered mutation seeped into the popular imagination. In Richard Matheson’s novel The Shrinking Man, the change is triggered by an encounter with a mysterious radioactive mist at sea and becomes a sophisticated exploration of post-war fears about masculine identity, as the hero is reduced to living in a dollhouse. But in Cold War America, unlike Japan, atomic radiation made superheroes more often than it made monsters: some were obvious like the Incredible Hulk, a scientist accidentally exposed to gamma rays during a bomb test and Spider-man, bitten by a radioactive spider (both 1962). For the Fantastic Four (1961) it was cosmic ray exposure in their rocket ship as they raced to beat the commies into space, while the X-Men (1963) celebrates the concept of mutation as a kind of youth liberation movement. Britain and The Bomb In science fiction literature, especially in Britain, where the atomic bomb had first been imagined, the vision was darker from the start. John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids (1955) imagined a return to medieval superstition after a nuclear war and a paranoid hunt to root out mutants as witches. Post-war British cinema was quick to grapple with the moral dilemmas of the atomic age. In Seven Days to Noon (1950) a British atomic weapons scientist, driven to madness by the horror of the power he has helped unleash, threatens to detonate a stolen device in central London if the government doesn’t close down the weapons programme. Post-war British cinema was quick to grapple with the moral dilemmas of the atomic age The film also employs a documentary-style realism; showing the mass evacuation of London in preparation for the detonation. There was a striking willingness in family entertainment just after the horrors of WW2, to face the new possibility of annihilation. Val Guest’s The Day The Earth Caught Fire (1954) documents the breakdown of society and the environment as nuclear tests shift the earth’s axis and humanity hurtles towards doom through accelerated climate change. Even dramas purportedly about outer space and not bombs, such as George Pal’s When Worlds Collide (1951) or the Quatermass serials and films are really exploring the cataclysmic potential of this new power. Pal went on to add the Bomb to his film of The Time Machine (1960) so that HG Wells’ traveller witnesses a nuclear war in 1966. Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove still disturbs. And even The Ed Sullivan Show screened A Short Vision – a creepy British animated film about nuclear devastation in 1956, and twice in two weeks at that, traumatising a generation of children who saw it by chance. A rosy view But optimism about atomic power coexisted with the fear of the Bomb. Some children’s books, or comics such as Eagle in the UK, celebrated its liberating technological potential. It would be powering our cars and spaceships in a Jetsons or Dan Dare future; just as the manned space programme grew directly out of the technological race to build the Bomb. Even our leisurewear echoed the bomb Brightly coloured atom balls featured in mid-century interior design – clocks, coat hooks and furniture. Even our leisurewear echoed the bomb. There was the bikini – itself named after the atoll in the Pacific that served as a nuclear test site. And what were the female sex symbols of the ‘50s – Hitchcock’s icy blondes, not to mention Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe, in their missile-shaped torpedo bras and corset armour – than the embodiment of a kind of sexual arms race towards mutually assured seduction? Blonde ‘bombshells’ indeed. Count Basie’s 1958 album The Atomic Mr Basie featured a mushroom cloud on its cover (Credit: Credit: Roulette Records) Count Basie’s 1958 album The Atomic Mr Basie featured a mushroom cloud on its cover – recasting a symbol of monumental destruction as one of creativity (Credit: Roulette Records) If there is one key image that has changed our imagination it is the mushroom cloud – seared with that first flash of detonation into our social memory. There it is on The Atomic Count Basie album sleeve in 1958, a nightmare image as American – and genuinely iconic – as Marilyn or the Coca-Cola bottle. The bomb has inspired entire art movements such as the auto-destructive art of Gustav Metzger, using acid to corrode in the act of creation. Jackson Pollock’s action paintings were, he said himself in 1950, “energy and motion made visible” in an instant, as the modern painter couldn’t express the age of the atom bomb in the old forms of any past culture. In the late ‘60s Tony Price began salvaging materials discarded from the Los Alamos labs to construct his art works, saying: “Los Alamos scrap is a kind of pure art in itself, since you are dealing with a harmonic principle of nuclear physics”. Fear becomes fancy Many films and books imagined a post-apocalyptic world, sometimes with a conveniently clean and white-robed new world order. Perhaps HG Wells was to blame. His book and film of Things To Come established this particular kind of futurist aesthetic. Others focused on grim survival such as Mad Max. It’s possible to argue the ultimate and most underappreciated atomic bomb film is Beneath The Planet of the Apes (1970) in which Nasa astronauts from the present find a tribe of mutant survivors in the irradiated remains of Manhattan worshipping the atom bomb itself. By the 1970s and ‘80s the early optimism of the ‘50s had gone altogether. Fears of nuclear accident and cover-up mutated with the post-Watergate conspiracy thriller in The China Syndrome (1979) – released 12 days before the real Three Mile Island disaster – and Silkwood (1983). By the 1970s and ‘80s the early optimism of the ‘50s had gone altogether As the Superpower stand off between the USSR and Nato grew, atomic nightmares infiltrated children’s entertainment. Raymond ‘The Snowman’ Briggs’s deceptively cute graphic novel and film When The Wind Blows was about a sweet elderly couple’s teeth and hair falling out after the bomb drops. As for pop music? It’s hard for modern teenagers to appreciate the disturbing power of pop videos like Blondie’s Atomic (1979), which portrayed a world of irradiated mutants dancing in the aftermath of a nuclear war. There was a revival of realistic dramas about how war might happen: Threads (1984) in Britain and The Day After (1983) in the US. Even the Matthew Broderick teen film War Games (1985), charming as it is, depends on a visceral terror of a nuclear strike at any moment. The mushroom cloud became a symbol of political subversion with sexual undertones (Credit: Credit: Art Archive/Alamy) The mushroom cloud eventually became a symbol of political subversion with sexual undertones – such as in this spoof of Reagan and Thatcher (Credit: Art Archive/Alamy) It’s not until 1994 that we truly saw how fear of the Bomb had declined. Four years after the fall of the USSR, James Cameron exploded a nuke just in the background of True Lies while Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis kissed; as if deliberately aping without any irony the Reagan and Thatcher Gone With the Wind parody poster that had become an emblem of the anti-nuclear weapons protest movement. It is a moment that shocks for its casualness. And while baddies with atom bombs have long been a trope in fiction (from Mickey Spillane’s Kiss Me Deadly and Goldfinger to the recent Melissa McCarthy film Spy) perhaps the biggest terror is that we might have forgotten to be afraid.

It’s one of the country’s best-loved songs – but the US national anthem has a surprising and colourful past. Clemency Burton-Hill investigates.

It was on the rainy night of 13 September, 1814, that a 35-year-old US lawyer named Frances Scott Key watched as a barrage of British shells rain down on Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbour. The War of 1812 had been raging for more than 18 months and Key was negotiating the release of an American prisoner. Fearful he knew too much, the Brits kept him on board a ship eight miles from shore. As night fell, he saw the sky turn red, and given the scale of the attack, was convinced the British would triumph. “It seemed as though mother earth had opened and was vomiting shot and shell in a sheet of fire and brimstone,” he observed. But as the smoke cleared in “the dawn's early light” on 14 September, Key watched in astonishment and relief as the US flag, not the Union Jack, was raised over the fort. According to the Smithsonian Institution, which boasts among its many historical treasures that original star-spangled banner, Key was so overcome by what he had witnessed that he was inspired to poetry. He showed the verses to his brother-in-law, Joseph H Nicholson, commander of a militia at Fort McHenry, who pointed out that the words would fit perfectly to the tune of a popular English ditty written in 1775 by the composer John Stafford Smith. The Anacreontic Song or Anacreon in Heaven had been penned for Smith’s aristocratic gentlemen’s club in London, but by the early 19th Century had travelled across the Atlantic and become well-known in the US. The flag that flew over Fort McHenry during its bombardment in 1814 (Credit: Credit: Wikipedia) The flag that flew over Fort McHenry during its bombardment in 1814, which was witnessed by Francis Scott Key (Credit: Wikipedia) Impressed by Key’s efforts, Nicholson took the poem to a printer in Baltimore and had it distributed it under the name Defence of Fort M'Henry, indicating the tune to which it should be sung. The Baltimore Patriot newspaper soon reprinted it, and within weeks, The Star-Spangled Banner, as it was quickly known, appeared in print across the country, immortalising both Key’s words and the soon-to-be historic flag it celebrated. ‘Soul-stirring words’ Adopted by the navy in 1889, the song was quoted in 1904 by Puccini in his opera Madama Butterfly. (The first two bars are a direct lift, giving the character Lieutenant Pinkerton his cue for the aria Dovunque al Mondo, while “O say, can you see…” is used in later arias by both Pinkerton and Cio-Cio San, Madama Butterfly herself.) In the early 20th Century, the song’s appeal seemed unstoppable. So popular had it become by 1916, in fact, that there were dozens of different versions, and President Woodrow Wilson asked the US Bureau of Education to produce an official edition. They in turn enlisted the help of five musicians: Walter Damrosch, Will Earheart, Arnold J Gantvoort, Oscar Sonneck and John Philip Sousa. The first performance of the standardised version was given at Carnegie Hall in December 1917. It was not, however, until 3 March, 1931, that The Star-Spangled Banner was officially made the United States’ national anthem by a congressional act signed by President Herbert Hoover. It was not until 3 March, 1931, that The Star-Spangled Banner was officially made the United States’ national anthem That relatively recent date may come as a surprise to those who imagine the anthem must go back much further in history, but this lack of awareness may be symptomatic of a wider trend. “Many Americans don’t realise how much of what we think is foundational in our country actually stems from the 1920s and the Depression era,” says Sarah Churchwell, professor of American literature and public understanding of the humanities at the University of East Anglia, and author of the widely acclaimed book Careless People. “When F Scott Fitzgerald – a distant relative of Frances Scott Key, after whom he was named – was beginning to think about The Great Gatsby in 1922, the year in which he would set the novel, America was still arguing about whether it should adopt a national anthem.” Although The Star-Spangled Banner was a frontrunner, Churchwell points out that it was vehemently opposed in certain quarters, especially among temperance campaigners. (John Philip Sousa had declared, perhaps literally: “it is the spirit of the music that inspires” as much as Key's “soul-stirring” words; it’s often quipped that you need to be drunk to sing it.) American Dream On 11 June, 1922, the Christian Scientist Augusta Emma Stetson, who had built the imposing First Christian Science church on New York’s Central Park West, took out a remarkable (and huge) advertisement in the New York Tribune with the headline “The Star-Spangled Banner Can Never Become Our National Anthem”. It talks of those “violent, un-singable cadences” which could never express “the spiritual ideals upon which the nation was based.” (“Not only had the music had not been composed by an American,” says Churchwell; “worse, it was ‘a ribald, sensual drinking song’.”) “Never,” thundered the advertisement, “has Congress, and never will Congress, legalize an anthem which sprang from the lowest qualities of human sentiment.” It warned, ominously: “God forbids it.” Congress had other ideas. “The Star-Spangled Banner was made America’s national anthem in 1931, two years after the market crashed, when Americans needed a renewal of faith,” says Churchwell, who points out that this was also the year in which the phrase ‘American Dream’ became a national catchphrase, thanks to a book called The Epic of America by James Truslow Adams. The connection, she believes, is salient. “In general, I think Americans are encouraged to think that everything about our country stretches back into the mists of time, and transcends history. That’s a key aspect of the American Dream, and it’s exactly what Fitzgerald put his finger on in Gatsby, the idea that we are constantly pulled back into our own history without understanding it.” Beyonce opened the 2013 Super Bowl press conference with the Star-Spangled Banner (Credit: Credit: Rex) Beyonce opened the 2013 Super Bowl press conference with the Star-Spangled Banner (Credit: Rex) Star-Spangled Banner: Greatest hits Jimi Hendrix, live at Woodstock in 1969 going crazy on the electric guitar (on the Monday morning…!) Marvin Gaye’s weirdly sensual take on it from 1983 Whitney Houston in 1991 – pre-recorded, but who cares: that voice! Beyoncé just nailing it at the 2004 Super Bowl Lady Antebellum in the 2010 World Series – with the Grammy award-winners giving a particularly nice line in close harmony… And while we’re talking harmony, it may be cheesy as heck but – these guys! Maybe the most moving ever?

Britain and the US share a common language – but English is spoken and spelled very differently on each side of the Atlantic. James Harbeck finds out why.

Why does American English take such liberties with our common tongue? On the other hand, why has it not taken more liberties? English speakers first started colonising America more than 400 years ago. Since then, American English has been evolving, influenced by other languages, culture and technology. As the linguist Max Weinreich said, a language is a dialect with an army and a navy; the US has been an independent country for more than two centuries – and boasts the world’s most powerful examples of both. So why is American not a separate language? Or should we view it as one? How did it come to be so different, and how did it not come to be more different? It starts with the identities of the first American English speakers. Four hundred years ago, the colonies were particularly attractive to people who were strongly opposed to the Church of England or couldn’t make a living there – they were not the cream of society. Once tobacco caught on, America became more attractive for those with money, but it still needed servants more than owners – servants and eventually slaves. The earliest American linguistic landscape was strongly influenced by dialects of the sort that even today are not highly esteemed by those with money. But they were still British, at first. The accent has changed more in British English than in much of American Then British English started changing in ways American didn’t. The ‘proper’ English of the early 1600s would sound to us like a cross between the English spoken in Cornwall and Dallas; the accent has changed more in British English than in much of American. Even at the time of the American Revolution, educated speech in England fully pronounced “r” in all places, and King George III probably said after, ask, dance, glass, and path the same as George Washington did: with the same a as in hat and fat. The ‘ah’ pronunciation was considered low-class in England until after the Revolution. Along with pronunciation, word use in the two countries began to differ. Bill Bryson, in Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States, lists a number of words the English have left in the dustbin but Americans have kept using, including cabin, bug, hog, deck (of cards), junk, jeer, hatchet, slick, molasses, cesspool, trash, chore, and mayhem, American uses of gotten as a past participle of get, fall to mean autumn, mad to mean angry, and sick to mean more generally ill, which came from England but fell out of favour in the native land. Brave new world American English changed too. It had influences not present in England: a new landscape, new animals, and new people – not just those who were already there when the Europeans arrived but immigrants from continental Europe, as well as African slaves brought over to work on the plantations. Spanish gave many words useful in the South West, such as canyon, coyote, mesa, and tornado; French handed over words such as prairie, bureau, and levee; Dutch gave words such as bluff, boss, and waffle; German gave pretzel, sauerkraut, and nix; the African languages of the slaves gave words such as goober, jambalaya, and the synonyms gumbo and okra. Later immigrant groups brought still more words. Many words were also taken (usually somewhat altered) from the indigenous cultures, eg moose, raccoon, caribou, opossum, skunk, hickory, pecan, squash, and toboggan. Prairie (Credit: Thinkstock) A new landscape, new animals and new people influenced American English. Words such as prairie came from French, while pretzel came from German (Credit: Thinkstock) Does your car have a boot and bonnet or a hood and trunk? English was also altered to suit need. Some things were named using existing words for passably similar things: laurel, beech, walnut, hemlock, robin, blackbird, lark, swallow, hedgehog. Once the Americans had their new government, words were pressed into service for some of its details as well, such as congress, senate, and assembly. Some things were named with new compounds: rattlesnake, bluegrass, bobcat, bullfrog; later, as the need arose, sidewalk, skyscraper, and drugstore. Words for things invented after American independence have often differed on opposite sides of the Atlantic: does your car have a boot and bonnet or a hood and trunk? Tongue twisters Early British visitors sometimes wrote of how little the dialect changed from place to place as they travelled through the colonies. America was also settled by people from all over Britain, not just one region, and they were quite mobile, which had a further homogenising effect. But the USA is a large country, and groups of immigrants from different countries have given distinct flavours to different regions. Once people settled in place, their speech started localising. Regional variations in accent also came – and are still coming, even today – from the same kinds of phonological shifts that, in England, had turned person into parson and more recently have given us the Sloany “fraffly” (frightfully). Sometimes regional pronunciations of words made their way back into the standard version of English as different words: varmint from vermin, cuss from curse, thrash from thresh, chaw from chew, tetchy from touchy, and gal from girl. Turns of phrase have developed differently in different parts of the country, too: depending on where you are in the US, “I might could do that,” “Anymore, we do it this way,” and “So don’t I” may or may not be perfectly normal speech. Americans felt most free – even obliged – to take linguistic liberties once they had taken their political liberty. As Noah Webster wrote in his 1791 Dissertations on the English Language, “As an independent nation, our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government.” Not that all Americans felt the same. When, in 1800, Caleb Alexander came out with his Columbian Dictionary of the English Language, one reviewer wrote: “This work, a disgrace to letters, is a disgusting collection of every vicious word or phrase, chosen by the absurd misapprehension, or coined by the boors of each local jurisdiction in the United States. It is a record of our imbecility.” Noah Webster (Credit: Getty Images) Noah Webster wrote in 1791, "As an independent nation, our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government." (Credit: Getty Images) Throughout the19th Century there was a great dictionary competition: between Webster’s deliberately American approach (his first full dictionary came out in 1818) and the much more British-orientated approach of Nathaniel Worcester (whose first dictionary was published in 1830). Both were very popular, and such esteemed authors as Longfellow, Hawthorne, and even Noah Webster’s distant relation Daniel Webster preferred Worcester’s conservative spellings. Which won out in the end? Well, we know, don’t we? No one today has heard of Worcester’s dictionaries. The Americans opted for a distinctiveness to mark their independence. The British, seeing this rebellion by those rough Yanks, pulled in the opposite direction. Dollars and sense The most cosmetically salient differences are, of course, the spellings. Webster promulgated many spelling reforms. Some did not catch on, and were reversed in his later dictionaries: no one spells bread as bred, give as giv, mean as meen, speak as speke, character as karacter, ache as ake, or tongue as tung. Others stuck. A few were inconsistently used in America and England before Webster, and his endorsement helped them to be standard in America and, consequently, rejected in England – notably the shift of words such as colour to color and of words such as naturalise to naturalize. Others for which Webster’s dictionaries were the prime vector include changing centre to center, defence to defense, connexion to connection, and chequer and masque to checker and mask. His removal of the k in words such as magick, musick, and logick even came to be the standard in England. For that matter, while many Brits are quick to denounce Americanisms where they see them (even ones that, as we have seen, came from England first), quite a few words of American invention have been adopted into British English, including belittle, caucus, prairie, cloudburst, blizzard, cafeteria, cocktail, talented, reliable, and influential. The commerce of words, as of goods and culture, has continued apace across the Atlantic. Traffic between the colonies and in particular, London, has always helped keep American from diverging more. London remained the centre of English culture as the American colonies developed, and Americans with money and connections regularly crossed the Atlantic. The areas of the US where more distinctive dialects of English are spoken are well away from the halls of power, and their speech is typically stigmatised in the general culture. New York and other money cities – and the great universities – have maintained versions of English not so different from the educated British standard. And that is an important reason American English is still American English. Money talks, and the US has not seen it as worthwhile to declare a distinct language, since American English, like the American dollar, is the current dominant force globally, like it or not.

Robots can make you do surprising things, says Alexander Reben, whose talking bots have elicited secrets from passers-by, festival-goers and even astronauts.

One day in April 2010, a man in his mid-30s happened to wander into the Media Lab at MIT in Boston and encountered a friend of mine. After chatting for a while and being polite, my friend asked him: “What do you do here?” The man explained that he was a runner from the Boston marathon who was stuck in the city because of a volcanic eruption in Iceland. Then something extraordinary happened. The man lay down on the floor and continued to tell my friend his troubles and his story. He had a big trip planned in Europe starting in Munich, he said. However, the volcano which had been spewing rocks across the Atlantic for several weeks had, in his words, “put the kibosh” on that. He was honest and open in a way that surprised me. Here is a picture my friend took of the man: (Credit: Boxie the robot) (Credit: Boxie the robot) And here is a picture of my friend: (Credit: Alexander Reben) Boxie the robot asked simple questions and got intriguing answers (Credit: Alexander Reben) The man had been conversing with a small robot I had built, called Boxie, equipped with a camera, and the ability to ask questions of the people it meets. Even though I had long realised that Boxie was capable of inspiring an emotional response, it was astounding that it could elicit intimate details from strangers so easily. Naturally, I asked myself: “Why would that man open up so readily to this relatively simple object?” To keep perspective, here was a man, laying on the floor in a place where he had never been before, talking to a cardboard box with a face. While Boxie had indeed been designed to be cute, friendly, and personable with a childlike voice, surely the man understood that it was not capable of actually listening. I built robots capable of eliciting unexpected responses, and sent them out to meet people – everybody from passers-by to astronauts This experience made me wonder about a broader question concerning our future with artificial intelligence: how will we interact with social robots as they become more common? Since then, I have built various robots capable of eliciting unexpected responses, and sent them out to meet people – everybody from passers-by to astronauts. And what I have found so far suggests that artificial beings will have the capacity to influence our behaviour in ways we don’t yet realise. For a few years after Boxie, I worked on distilling the aspects of the robot which made people want to talk to and open up to it. These included making it smaller and cuter, using a child voice and improving the questions and interaction. Like Boxie, each bot also had a camera inside its head to film people’s answers. The BlabDroids encouraged people to reveal surprising secrets (Credit: Alexander Reben) The BlabDroids encouraged people to reveal surprising secrets (Credit: Alexander Reben) I partnered up with filmmaker and artist Brent Hoff, and sent the robots, which we called BlabDroids, out to parks, public spaces and film festivals internationally, such as IDFA and Tribeca, to interview people in different places and cultures. The idea was to create the first documentary filmed by robots, and over the past few years, they have visited the people of the USA, the Netherlands, China, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, the UK and others. When the robot interviewed the astronaut Chris Hadfield, his response was unexpected It didn’t take long for us to discover that people were engaging with the robots on a level I never would have expected. Interaction time rose from an average of about eight minutes with Boxie to an average of about 30 minutes with these new robots. Furthermore, what people were revealing to the BlabDroids included very personal stories and things that you would not normally tell a stranger. (It is worth noting that the robot told its interviewees that it was recording them for a documentary to be shown later in the festival, so there was not deception to get the responses.) Here are a few of the conversations the robot had: BlabDroid: “What is the worst thing you have ever done to someone?” Person 1: “Not telling my dad I loved him before he died.” Person 2: "The worst thing I ever did was, um, made it so that my mother had to drown some kittens one time and I didn't realise until after that was over that it was a very difficult thing for her to do and I've never... I've never forgiven myself for making her drown some little kittens, but we couldn't keep them and I should have come up with some other way." BlabDroid: “What is something you have never told a stranger before?” Person: “When I was a kid I didn’t like to pee in public bathrooms. So I would hold my pee until I got home. This one time I was on my bike and I could not hold it, so I peed and left a trail behind me.” BlabDroid: “If you could tell someone not to make the same mistake you did, what mistake would that be?” Person 1: “Having kids.” And here is the BlabDroid interviewing the astronaut Chris Hadfield. As you’ll see, he responds in a different way to how you might expect him to talk with a human adult: The frank nature of the replies elicited by BlabDroid made me realise just how powerful social robots could be. Not only were people fully trusting them, they were connecting on a social level which allowed for a high level of comfort. They had entered a space in people’s minds usually reserved for other people they trusted – and this was something significant. You don't have one of these robots with you right now, but let's do a little experiment with a completely different kind of machine, a “robotic sculpture” featuring two simple balloons. Watch the video below and take note of what attributes you give to the balloons (share your answers on BBC Future’s Facebook page or Twitter if you wish). What did you think the balloons were doing? Some responses I heard, while being a fly on the wall in the gallery where they were displayed, included everything from “Well, they're fighting,” to “Oh, this is obviously about domestic violence.” The overwhelming response was that they were in conflict. The interesting thing here is not necessarily the violent aspect, but the fact people kept saying “they” or “them” not “it”. Psychologists know that we are quick to anthropomorphise inanimate objects. This was most famously depicted in an experiment in the 1940s, conducted by Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel. They asked people to watch a film of simple shapes interacting, and found that people gave them surprisingly human-like qualities, describing a triangle as “mean” and “bullying”, while the other shapes were “afraid” or “shy”. Another machine-based art project I designed with Alicia Eggert in 2012 also provoked people to anthropomorphise – but this time, it made some of them feel uncomfortable. We called it the pulse machine. A kick drum was fitted with a robotic striker which was attached to a countdown mechanism. The machine was “born” during the opening and was given the lifespan a person who was born on that day would have (about 78 years). The machine started its pulse and slowly counted down to its demise. With only this simple setup, people had very different yet extremely personal reactions to it. Some felt that it was morbid and were visually upset by it. Others felt it gave them some energy to go out and do something; it reminded them that life was short. One person said that it had made them sad, as it reminded them of the recent passing of their loved one. Our propensity to form bonds with machines is already becoming apparent I found it quite profound that these strong emotions occurred from just a drum and countdown clock. To those who viewed it, the machine was born, is alive, and is now dying. This really drove home the fact that very little was required for people to anthropomorphise an object. It also showed just how empathetic we are as people and that we can empathise with things which are not us. Indeed, our propensity to form bonds with machines is already becoming apparent as they become a bigger part of our lives: some soldiers are known to mourn their bomb-disposal robots, and owners of Aibo dogs in Japan have staged funerals for their robotic pet dogs. If a machine can become the embodiment of a living thing, the effect of it “dying” can lead to a very real mourning. All of which raises some difficult ethical questions as we build robots that are smarter and better able to converse with us. How personal and “real” do we want these robots to be? At what point does a robot designed to trigger our emotions become manipulative? Where does one draw the line? One of the possibilities this opens up is automating aspects of our emotional lives where we usually depend on other people for sympathy As the philosopher John Campbell told me: “One of the possibilities this opens up is automating aspects of our emotional lives where we usually depend on other people for sympathy and support. Rather than relying on your partner to listen to the problems you’ve had at work all day, why not explain them to a sympathetic robot that makes eye contact with you, listens with apparent interest, making all the right noises, remembers and cross-indexes everything you say?” Once we accept a machine is alive, any relationship we form with it will be on the same level as any other living thing. Thus, robots are truly alive in our minds; which is perhaps more significant to the future of human-machine relationships than any Turing test. A robot doesn’t need to convince us it is human – we’re ready to believe it already

Marvel’s latest superhero spectacular was supposed to scale down to the level of insects, but instead goes for massive spectacle. Bigger equals blander, writes Owen Gleiberman.

Paul Rudd is such a witty, skilled actor that if any star could take a superhero origin story and breathe some brash new life into it, you’d think it would be him. But in Ant-Man, a big-screen Marvel behemoth that’s as slapped together as it is expensive, Rudd doesn’t just get small. He gets tamed and diluted– spiritually reduced. It’s hard to say if the film neuters his personality or if Rudd got there first. He plays Scott Lang, an idealistic cat burglar who becomes the unwitting guinea pig in an experiment to create the ultimate secret weapon: a stealth superhero the size of an insect. Lang, in his own mind, was meant for bigger things. But after spending three years in San Quentin prison for blowing the whistle on a corporation, he discovers that his life is a wreck. He loses joint custody of his daughter, and the only place that will hire him is Baskin Robbins. That’s when he’s recruited to put on an experimental suit that reduces anyone who wears it to the size of an ant. Supposedly, he gets stronger as well, though we don’t see much evidence of that; it would have been nice if he’d lifted at least one sugar cube 50 times his weight. Rudd, in his first fantasy blockbuster, is like an obedient soldier going through a drill. There’s one funny bit where he says, “I ruined the moment, didn’t I?”, but it’s just about the only moment when the film’s facetiousness seems less than laboured. The actor who injects a bit of pizzazz into Ant-Man is Michael Douglas. He plays Lang’s crusty mentor, Dr Hank Pym, a fallen scientist who has seen his research into how to shrink the distance between atoms stolen right out from under him. Pym has reason to be cranky, but Douglas invests even the most neutral lines with an anger more bristly than his goatee. He acts like he’s still in The China Syndrome – in other words, as if something is truly at stake. Yet his stern performance is also a winning piece of kitsch, because Douglas seems to be the only person on screen who didn’t get the memo: that there’s nothing at stake in Ant-Man beyond a franchise marketing plan aimed squarely at 10-year-olds. The film isn’t terrible, but it makes earlier Marvel outings like the first Spider-Man or Iron Man look like masterpieces. There’s hardly a trope in it you haven’t seen before, and done with far greater flair. ‘It’s the pictures that got small’ The central problem is that Ant-Man, at least in this movie, is not a very fun hero. When Rudd is in costume, his disembodied voice seems severed from the character, there’s little ‘wow!’ factor to his stunts, and even the Ant-Man suit lacks a certain basic pop appeal. Spider-Man looks like a humanoid arachnid, Batman looks like a bat, but Ant-Man looks… well, like a guy in the sort of helmet you’d wear if you were mopping up industrial waste, plus a patchy chest protector that seems to have been fashioned out of a fruit fly’s meshed cornea. Apart from his size, there’s nothing especially ant-like about Ant-Man, though he does command an army of ants and ride around on top of one, which at times makes him seem like the world’s tiniest cowboy leading a high-speed insect cattle drive. None of this would be an issue if he were in any way cool. But he is not. He’s like a miniaturised stunt man who suddenly got yanked onto centre stage. In the 1950s and ‘60s, getting small was a potent source of Hollywood sci-fi fantasy. The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) and The Fly (1958) were irresistible parables of modern man diminishing into the void as the world around him grew more and more overwhelming. Fantastic Voyage (1966) flipped the power dynamic, as being microscopic took you inside a novel universe – the human body. In each case, the fantasy was indelible. It had the kick of imagination built from the cellular level up. Ant-Man, by contrast, never figures out whether it wants to place us inside Lang’s experience or simply turn it into a spectacle. The villain is a shaven-headed corporate stooge named Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), and everyone keeps nattering on about the “chaos” he’s planning to unleash. But that’s a rather unfortunate word choice, because it evokes the havoc wreaked by Heath Ledger’s Joker, which truly was chaos. Cross, using a miniaturised alter ego named Yellowjacket, never puts forth a plan of much coherence, and that leaves his villainy almost entirely abstract. He’s the bad guy because the movie has to have one. It also needs a love interest, so Pym has an embattled daughter, played by Evangeline Lilly in a Louise Brooks-meets-Catwoman hairdo. She gets to say things like “We’re all doing this for reasons much bigger than any one of us.” At which point you may honestly wonder what those reasons are: the greater fate of Shield? The stock price of Disney? The setting up of the teaser tucked inside the closing credits? Either way, it feels like she’s making a mountain out of an anthill.

No lawmaker earns N1m a month – RMAFC chairman

Chairman, Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission, Mr. Elias Mbam, in this interview with EVEREST AMAEFULE, speaks on the stormy issue of salaries and allowances of political office holders You have set up a committee to review the salaries and allowances of political, public and judicial office holders. Before we get to that, how did we arrive at such allowances that some Nigerians consider outrageous? In 2007, that was about eight years ago; this commission reviewed the then salaries and allowances of political and public office holders. That was done in consideration of many factors. One of them was the monetisation of perks of office holders. Before the monetisation, office holders of very high level were provided with vehicles, with houses, and maintained by government. Two, the commission then took into consideration the fundamentals of the Nigerian economy. It looked at the Gross Domestic Product growth rate, the inflation, and also wanted to ensure honesty and prestige of the office holder. Most importantly, it looked at affordability and sustainability. Some of these allowances are not peculiar to only political office holders. There are some other agencies of government that also enjoy same. That was how they arrived at the review of the remunerations of the office holders then. Since that was passed into law in 2008, this commission has not reviewed it again. It has remained so since then. Unfortunately, some people think that the commission on daily basis changes the salaries particularly of the National Assembly members. So why do you want to review the packages downward now? One is that the economic realities of today demand that we look at the prevailing circumstance and let it reflect on remunerations. As I said earlier, we have to ensure affordability and sustainability. Is the present salary affordable and sustainable? And of course, you cannot ignore the plea of Nigerians about the merits and the demerits of the current packages. There was an attempt by the commission to review the packages downwards during the time of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. That review never saw the light of the day. Why was the review unsuccessful? I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t here then. From the much I know as a Nigerian, it was inconclusive. I wouldn’t want to use the word unsuccessful. It was inconclusive. What do you want to do differently now to ensure that the bill is passed? Well, this one; the mood of the nation supports it. The National Assembly is even in the forefront of the review. So if the problem was the National Assembly; this time I am lucky. If the leadership of the National Assembly is in support of the review, and the Nigerian people are in support of the review, and the governments at all levels are in support of the review; I wonder why it should not be successful. What are we expecting in the review? Is it going to concentrate on the salaries or the allowances? If you look at the remuneration package, the bulk of it is on allowances. Take for instance, the annual salary of a legislator is about N2m. I am not sure that is a concern to anybody. It is the allowances. And the law also is clear that you don’t reduce the salary after the appointment. Everybody knows that the problem or the issue is not the salary but the allowances. So we are looking at the allowances. It is not going to be the affair of the commission alone. It is going to be an affair of all Nigerians, all stakeholders, and all levels of government. Within a week, we will advertise for submission of memoranda. We will invite memoranda from Nigerians so you have an opportunity yourself to make your own input. And we are outlining areas of concentration in that publication. What are those areas of concentrations? The allowances – ranging from vehicle, housing, to estacodes. It will be detailed. So are we likely to see an upward review of the basic salary? The process will determine that. The judges kicked against the downward review of their earnings. How do you intend to tackle that? What Nigerians say, we will do. So are you going to put it to voting? I set the process. What I mean by process is that first of all, we are going to invite memoranda. Two, we are going to meet to interact with stakeholders. We are going to meet; including with the judiciary, the executive at all levels of government. We will meet with Nigerians, stakeholders. We will also administer questionnaire. So all these will come up and we also compare with what obtains elsewhere. So, it is not a question of I wish; I don’t wish. We are at a time when many states are not able to pay salaries and you are the chairman of RMAFC. Is it that the workforce is bloated or the remuneration is bloated? My thinking is that they did not prioritise their needs; with the possibility of wastage, with the possibility of unnecessary expenditure. I don’t see why a government should not pay its workers. That is the first thing that should be done. They are now calling it stomach infrastructure. If you didn’t eat, you would not have been able to come here for this interview. Imagine somebody that has not been paid for six months! I think we should reorder our priorities. I also feel strongly that if the states managed their resources and also don’t rely fully on revenue they get from the federation account, they wouldn’t have this problem. Another problem is the huge sum of money that legislators, for instance, take every quarter that is called constituency project. How do we tackle this problem? I am happy that somebody is pointing this out. I feel, too, that many people are not well informed about the salaries and allowances determined by the commission. From what have been determined, nobody in the National Assembly should get more than N1m in salaries and allowances. You cannot call severance allowance salary and you cannot call a vehicle loan allowance. The salaries and allowances include the salaries of personal assistant to the legislator. It also includes the domestic staff. So by the time you remove all those ones, you will be surprised that the salary is much lower than N1m. There have been allegations that they take more allowances than the commission has prescribed. The law is very clear. If you take beyond what the law says, the chief accounting officer should be held accountable. I also expect that the journalist should invoke the Freedom of Information Act and not rely on rumours or speculations. But a Non-Governmental Organisation invoked that law and it did not work. They refused to give a breakdown of their budget. Is it not a law? Why not take it to the court of law? If you want information from this office and I refuse to give it to you, the FOI is clear on what you should do. So, I don’t think it is enough reason that you tried and you could not get it. Let us take you to some specific allowances which you have mentioned. There is personal assistant; there is domestic staff; there are legislative aides and there is special assistant. Don’t you see some duplication here? It is good we read the law very well. The special assistant is supposed to come from the system. Like the National Assembly which you mentioned, the National Assembly Service Commission is supposed to provide the special assistant. The PA is personal to him. The service recognises that at the level of a legislator, a level of service should be provided. It is not everything that you will have time to attend to. It also recognises that a level of domestic staff like cook, gardener, and steward should be provided. The only thing different now is that instead of government recruiting and posting them to your house; you are paid and you now recruit and pay the people. You had mentioned that some of these allowances also apply to services other than political office holders. Given the circumstances we have found ourselves, are you recommending a service-wide review of salaries and allowances? If I were to do that, I would have long released the result. It is a process. I am here not to serve myself but to serve Nigerians. So it is not my wish that matters. If it were my wish, I would have long given it. But you are the Chairman of RMAFC. That presumes some expertise on the economy. So you should have some opinion. I am presiding. I will not allow my prejudice or wish to override the wishes of the majority of Nigerians. That is why I am here. So, I will depend on what majority of Nigerians are saying and then make a decision. I will make a decision based on what is available to me. If this process goes on, I will follow the end result of the process. I cannot say, because I don’t like you as a minister, you cannot get X naira. So, my own position is immaterial in this respect. The state governments are eventually being bailed out. What is your take on this? It is their money. That money is the tax element on the operations of the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas and the tax belongs to the federation. It is just that it is timely. It is a bailout in the sense that it came at the right time but whether they had problem or not; they are supposed to share it. It is one of the sources of revenue to the federation account which is shared among the three tiers of government. We learnt that part of what they shared is from the Excess Crude Account. I heard that the way you heard it. But what was brought to me this morning is that what was shared was from the LNG. Well, the Federation Account Allocation Committee has also agreed to share that (ECA). It is also their money. That money belongs to the federation. It belongs to the three tiers of government. It appears there is no need for the Excess Crude Account any longer. It depends on what you mean by need. The purpose of the ECA is to have reserve for the rainy day and if it has started raining, and you decide to take advantage of your reserve; I don’t think it is a question of need. It is a question of doing the work it was meant to do. Don’t you think it may rain more in the future? You have to meet the needs of today before you talk about tomorrow. And how much is the money? I heard the Accountant General say $1.6bn or is it $1.7bn. It is not much. We don’t hope that the price of crude oil will remain the way it is. I have said several times that the downward trend in the price of crude oil raises an opportunity for us because it will make us to think of how to take advantage of other ways of developing our economy and that goes straight to diversification. I support the idea of taking advantage of the opportunity that the problem provides for us to now look at other sources of revenue. And I think that is where we will finally land – to develop other sources and I believe; we will not lack. We have enough potential in this country. The way you are talking about taking advantage of other sectors of the economy; what exactly are you looking at? What I am looking at is the solid minerals sector. Basically, all states and even all local governments have one mineral deposit or the other. I’m also looking at agriculture which sustained the economy in the first republic. What is wrong with the groundnut pyramid, the cocoa and the perm kernel, cotton and rubber? These are the areas that provided the highest number of employment to our people. We left them in pursuit of the money from oil and gas. This is also an opportunity for the manufacturing sector. Most of our industries have collapsed. So this is an opportunity to revitalise our industries. When they start production, they will employ people and pay their taxes. The economy will be reactivated and at the end, it will lead to more development. Why have investors ignored our solid minerals? What can we do differently to attract investment to this sector? That is the question we should answer. Why are people not interested in the sector? For an investor to be interested, the environment must be attractive. Why is our environment not attractive? The reasons are obvious to you. We have problem with power and infrastructure. We have security problem. We have even legal and institutional framework problems. So these things must be brought to the level acceptable to the international community. So we really need to ask ourselves that question. Why are people not taking advantage of the solid minerals sector? But that is to the extreme. I know that a lot of things are happening in the sector. Right now, they have started contributing to the federation account. It is not just like nothing is going on but we believe that we should develop that area. What is the level of their contribution to the federation account? Is it not insignificant? The important thing is that it has started. Is it worse now that it has started than when it had not started? It is not significant compared to the other sources but that is why we are saying, develop. If we develop, it becomes significant. It can even become better than others. You talked about infrastructure and specifically power. Where do we get the money to develop the infrastructure now that it is already raining? We have to order our priorities right. You don’t borrow money to build government house. We have to prioritise our needs because for now, we can’t meet all our needs. So even if we are borrowing, we should target areas that will help us to grow our economy and if we do that, certainly power will come very high as a priority. Let me take you back to the issue of remuneration of lawmakers. The National Assembly made a move to include their principal officers among Nigerians to be entitled to life pension. Well, when you are talking about pension; I will tell you straightaway that our commission is not involved. Our responsibility ends with terminal benefits for political office holders. If there are laws about pension, we are not involved. And I wouldn’t be able to provide any answer in that respect. But you are a key player in this economy as long as revenue generation and allocation is concerned. You should have an opinion. I am a key player; no doubt about that but I have a limitation in my mandate. It is not within our mandate. You are asking me these questions here because I am the Chairman of RMAFC and not as Elias Mbam. When I get out here and you want to ask my opinion as a Nigerian; I will give it to you. It does appear that jumbo salaries have not taken care of the need to prevent public officials from putting their hands into the public tilt. What is your take on this? Well, from every 12, there must be a Judas. I don’t even know which one is jumbo. Is it the one you publish in your newspapers where it is said we have determined remunerations up to the tune of more than N30m for a person or the one that we determined that nobody earns up to N1m take home. None of these political appointees or members of the National Assembly earn up to N1m in one month. But you are aware that even The Economist compared the earnings of legislators across the world and ranked Nigeria among the highest. I need to see what they are using for the comparison. I need to see it to know whether they are comparing it with facts. Most of the things I read are not the facts. If they are taking money from elsewhere; I don’t know about that. But what we are saying is that with respect to what we determine at RMAFC, they don’t earn up to N1m a month. If you are comparing that; I need to see side by side what they are comparing with. But you saw the publication which went virile. I have questioned some of the publications I see. Were you not aware of the publication that said wardrobe allowance was N8.6bn? Was that a fact? What I am saying is that for me to comment; I need to see the comparison or you mention them. Even that wardrobe allowance you mentioned now. Do our lawmakers who had been well off need such allowance when the masses are suffering? You have opportunity to air your view now. We are now reviewing that package and I will invite you to air your view. The earnings of many political office holders are shrouded in secrecy. Why don’t you put these in the public domain for the sake of transparency? I think you are not fair to the commission. Bring your computer and open our website. I know it is on your website. Why don’t you put them on domains with wider reaches? We have put it in newspapers more than 10 times. Each time there was issue raised by the public, we put it there. If you need it; before you go we make photocopy and give to you. It is a public document. It is not a secret. So, it is unfair to say that it is shrouded in secrecy. You have been writing on this. When I went for interview on a TV station; they had a copy as they were talking to me. Now as a nation; how can we ensure that what you prescribe is what public officials collect? People should do their work. We have chief accounting officers. Once it is a law; if you contravene a law, you should be taken up. We have chief accounting officers in every government establishment. If it is the National Assembly, the clerk is the chief accounting officer. We have the Auditor-General of the Federation. So government has agencies that are charged with the responsibility of ensuring that laws are obeyed. And then journalists have the Freedom of Information Act. If you need the salary of Elias Mbam; it should be given to you. So, I think everybody should do their work. How far have you gone about the review and what if the National Assembly does not accept what finally comes out from the process, what will you do? As you correctly said, the process has started. You must have read that we have called for memoranda from the members of the public. We are receiving memoranda and we are doing consultations. We are gathering information; we are gathering data. And that is where to start. I don’t want to believe that the National Assembly will in any way do anything not to address this issue. Already, I am aware that they have even constituted a small committee on their own to look at the issue. So we need to sensitise everybody to buy into this. And we are trying to extend the consultation to the National Assembly. So I am optimistic that they are going to deliberate on whatever we present to them.

buhari is not slow he is only working~mohammed

National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, insists in this interview with GBENRO ADEOYE that President Muhammadu Buhari’s government has not been slow The All Progressives Congress won the election about two months to President Muhammadu Buhari’s inauguration and yet, no ministerial appointments. Are you sure this party is prepared for governance? I think that view is a bit misinformed. In the first instance, President Muhammadu Buhari came to power just about six weeks ago and it is not correct to say that because certain appointments have not been made, therefore, the government has slowed down or that the APC is not ready for governance. Unfortunately, this view is gaining ground but it is not correct. A party has two documents that guide it when it comes to power, the first is the manifesto. The manifesto is what you put together as your proposals and ideas when you are not in power yet. This government, as soon as we won, we set up a transition committee. That committee was to look at our manifesto and the handover notes that we received and see that we are able to harmonise both. Like they say, you campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose. Until you are in power, you don’t know exactly the kind of situation or rot you are going to meet on ground. So however laudable some of your programmes might be in the manifesto, until when you are given the handover notes, you don’t really know how feasible they are. In our own case, we were not very fortunate with the level of cooperation that the transition committee got from the immediate past government. I’m sure that everybody knows that we are not making excuses, it’s true and it’s a fact that until five days to the inauguration, we never received any handover notes. So that hampered us. Secondly, the rot we met was unexpected. In spite of whatever anybody is saying, the obligations that were left behind was about N7trn. When you have obligations of about N7trn, then you know it is a very deep hole. I’m not talking about debts or unpaid workers’ salaries, but obligations left in all the various ministries. Beyond the failure to appoint ministers, Nigerians say everything about this government is slow, is it deliberate? Again, why do people say this government is slow? This government is not slow. The government is focused; it is methodological. It is following its manifesto and the recommendations of the transition committee in what it’s doing. People will say this government does not have ministers and a Secretary to the Government of the Federation, but we are saying this government wants people with proven track records of competence and integrity. This is coupled with the fact that Nigeria is a delicate country that is sensitive to ethnic and religious divides. Even when you want to make appointments, you will make it, looking at two issues. One, the APC itself came in as a coalition government of different parties or forces. Two, we have inherited a complex country. All we are doing is to make a thorough and meticulous research before we start putting people in key offices. And in any event, if you look from 1999 till date, it has always taken about six weeks for any administration to name its ministers. Also, this is the first time we are having a real transition. It’s not one President succeeding himself or one party succeeding itself, this is a completely new scenario where you have hundreds of appointments to make, so we have to be very careful. Then again, Nigerians must understand that the fact that you don’t have ministers or SGF or Chief of Staff does not mean that the government is not performing. This government is performing. Policy statements are being issued, things are getting done. But we have this fixation on ministers and their appointments. This Buhari effect has really fast tracked matters and within the six weeks, we have not been idle. Within six weeks, the President has hit the ground running on security. Are you referring to the recent spate of bombings and the lives that are being lost every day? How does that translate into hitting the ground running? Nigerians should look at things in the correct context. What was Boko Haram this time last year? What is it today? This time last year, Boko Haram held territories. But by the time former President Goodluck Jonathan left, our soldiers had reclaimed the territories and we were winning the war. But Buhari came in and Jonathan’s success seems to have been lost… No! It’s not lost. You see, let me tell you something. The achievements will be lost only if the liberated areas have been retaken by the insurgents. What did Jonathan administration achieve? His administration liberated certain territories that were held by Boko Haram insurgents. He achieved driving the insurgents out of Sambisa forest. We have not lost one single territory, not one inch, since we came to power. Anybody who understands insurgency will know that once you dislodge them from their stronghold, they will lack central command and control and each of them will go on suicidal missions. They don’t have the capacity they used to have before to plan attacks. What we have today is each of them operating in silos and I can assure you that by the time the multinational joint task force takes off at the end of this month, and with the new appointments of the service chiefs, improving our intelligence gathering, we are going to see that Boko Haram will be a thing of the past. Even attacks on soft targets you have mentioned now had reduced before Jonathan handed over government to Buhari. Today, we have explosions everywhere. So what new thing has this government done? You see, by the time Jonathan was leaving office, a lot of progress was made in dislodging and regaining our territories but it didn’t mean that these attacks were not going on. This time around, all they are left with are bomb attacks; they cannot do the kinds of attacks they used to plan. You keep saying that Boko Haram is weaker but if its weakness can cause so many deaths of innocent Nigerians within six weeks of your party’s administration, what then happens if it is strong? When people fail to understand the imports of statements, it leads to a lot of misconception. The organisation, I said is getting weaker because they have been dislodged from their strongholds, they have been dispersed and they no longer hold territories. It doesn’t mean that they cannot be vicious. It’s just like having robbers who used to live in a room before. If you disperse them without catching them, it doesn’t mean they won’t steal elsewhere again, but it means they cannot sit together and plan how they will rob heavily. Each will steal on his own. What I meant was that organisationally, they are weakened. Earlier you said you admitted that you did not realise the rot in government until you got in. Nigerians will like to know why you made so many promises without having the full knowledge of what was on ground. I think you are missing the point. You see, a political party must have an agenda. It must be able to analyse situations and say what are the major problems confronting my country today. When I get to power, how will I address them and what will be my priorities? That is what they mean by a manifesto. A manifesto also distinguishes one party from another. Are you going to be social welfarist party or what? We in the APC, from Day 1, conducted a survey to get to know the problems of this country and the result of the survey told us that unemployment, corruption and insecurity are the major challenges of this country. So we wove our manifesto around these. That was why we said we would provide so many jobs, tackle corruption and insecurity. But that is one thing; another thing is to say we want to create one million jobs a year because we know that as of today; about 40 per cent of our youths are unemployed. But when you are saying that, of course, you have no idea what kind of money or debt is there in government. So if you now find out that the previous government had left you N7trn debt, it doesn’t mean that you will not go ahead to employ the people. It only means that you must look for easy means of raising funds to do so and that you cannot only depend on the traditional source of income. So it does not mean that a party cannot have a manifesto because it doesn’t know what it will meet on ground. For instance, we have N7trn debt but we are not dislodged by that one bit because we also know that a lot of the money belonging to the Federal Government was never remitted to it. So if government can block those leakages, it will still be able to do as it has promised. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has yet to deny the assertion that between 2012 and 2015, it made N8.1trn and that it only remitted N4.3trn, leaving out about N3.8trn. Imagine what the N3.8trn can do for any government. Also until we came to power, nobody knew that the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Company was paying tax. It was what it paid on June 17 this year that we shared among the three tiers of governments. After all, it paid in 2014, what happened to it? In June 2009, LNG paid over $4.7bn as dividend to the NNPC, where did it go to? For us, we are not daunted by the rot, but we have to clear the rot first. But we have to know which leakages to block. If we were not meticulous, how would we even know where they were hiding the money? There was a full page advert on ThisDay on May 21, where LNG said it had paid over $9bn to its shareholders and Nigeria with 49 per cent share holdings took over $4.7bn. These are the areas that this government is looking into and people are now saying it should appoint ministers, appoint SSG. It does not mean that because you have not appointed ministers, you are not working. Some works are even probably better done. But we know that a lot of sectors have grounded to a halt and people are afraid to invest because no one is sure of the policies of the government yet. Honestly, nobody has come out with any proof that the government has slowed down because ministers have not been appointed. Yes, we agree that Nigerians are perfectly entitled to express these feelings but we are also saying it doesn’t equate with nonperformance. Your party has been talking about the rot, the need for patience and all that. But we all knew Nigeria was in a bad state financially even before Jonathan handed over power to you. Are your complaints some kind of excuse for the APC government not to deliver on its promises? I don’t agree. Nobody knew the extent of the rot. See, we didn’t expect that we were going to meet N7trn in debt. So what did you expect? We expected to probably have some debts but you see, N7trn is the equivalent of more than a year budget of the country. We didn’t expect that. We knew there was a lot of profligacy in government but we didn’t expect this debt. Two, what did we do when we met this? We didn’t fold our arms. We got in and within six weeks, we were able to arrange a bailout for states. And I’ve heard a lot of uninformed comments about that. Some people say that bailing out states is actually rewarding corruption and I ask ‘do they know that they are talking about human beings? Do they know they are talking about hundreds of thousands of workers all over Nigeria who have not been paid, some for as long as nine months? Do they appreciate that these workers have children who have to pay school fees, eat and tend to medical obligations? You are now saying that simply because you suspect that the governors have been profligate, therefore punish everybody. Now, who says that any governor who was corrupt would go scot free? We are not saying that. But we are saying that 18 states going on strike and hundreds of thousands of people going hungry is a bad situation. So what did we do? We took the $2.1bn which was paid in tax by both Shell and LNG and shared it among the three tiers of government. For those states that are unable to pay salaries, we asked the Central Bank of Nigeria to create a soft loan for them so they can clear their backlogs. Finally, we said we know that most of these states are struggling under debts owed to commercial banks. This means that a huge sum of their money goes into servicing debts every month. So we said go and buy these loans and then restructure it to 25 years so that those servicing debts with about N2bn every month will be paying less than N200m, so that they can be free from the shackles. That way, they can have enough money to pay workers’ salaries, develop health infrastructure and other things. People do not even appreciate this. Yet, we have not been in government for two months, why didn’t the previous government think of this? States like Kogi, Benue and Osun had owed several months salaries. Yet, you still say that this government is just talking, the president is slow, he is not slow. We are not talking, we are working, and we are performing. Look at the new era of transparency. When we came in, about 1,300 megawatts of electricity was being generated. Today, it’s 4,700MW. What did we do? We didn’t do anything. That is the Buhari effect for you. Of course, some clowns are saying it’s because it’s rainy season. Wasn’t there rainy season in 2014? What about in 2013, wasn’t there rainy season? When you look at the head, you take your moral bearing from him. Now, the PDP said the refusal of the President to approve N400m to buy bullet proof vehicles was cosmetic. What is cosmetic in N400m? Let’s face it, the same vehicles that are used by the presidents are what the governors use. Supposing every state in the federation today says we are going to take a cue from Mr. President and not buy new bullet proof cars, we will use the ones our predecessors handed over to us; we will be saving N400m in each of the states. The PDP does not even understand the power of symbolism, the power of leading by example. And you say that is just talking, multiply N400m by 36, what do you get? But some say the President and the Vice President lack the powers to cut their salaries, that only the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission which is backed by the Senate, has the power to do that. Honestly at times, it is as if common sense has taken flight in this country. If I’m your employer and I’m paying you N100,000 every month and you come to me and say Mr. Mohammed, ‘I see your company is facing a lot of trouble and if it does not survive, I would lose my job. Sir, I don’t mind taking N50,000’. I didn’t take it from you, you came to me. What laws have you violated? It’s a different thing if the president says I’m going to cut the salaries of everybody. But if the President and Vice President say they won’t collect the full salary, what they are trying to do is see whether by this symbol, some people will come and say we are also going to make sacrifices for Nigeria. And then we are bad mouthing it as if it’s a bad thing to do. If your wife, for instance, says, I see you are struggling to pay our children’s school fees, don’t bother giving me house allowance for this month. What law has she broken? When some people make comments, I laugh at them as if we also didn’t go to school. President Buhari promised to publicly declare his assets and prune the presidential air fleet, he hasn’t done anything in that regard, yet you say this government is not slow? What has that got to do with being slow? Hear that. Wait, I will answer you. I think the office of the Code of Conduct Bureau said the President can only go public after it has verified the assets he said he has. No, what the CCB said was that it didn’t stop the President from going ahead to declare his assets publicly. No, the CCB said so. No! No! No! Supposing I said I have 10 houses but actually have only one house. Then after verification, it is discovered I have only one house, won’t that be ridiculous? So that was why the CCB said that it should happen after the assets are verified; it is then the President can now make his asset declaration public. But how do you term that as being slow? Then the other one, you ask about pruning the presidential air fleet. So even if I want to sell my car, won’t you value it to know the condition in which it is? Do you think what they want to sell is Akara (bean cake)? Number one, I don’t know when he made that promise. But even if that is true, a man has four years to spend in office and you want him to do everything within the first four weeks? What is this inordinate haste about? But with the pace at which the President is going, how will he deliver on his promises to feed school children, steady the Naira, pay graduates stipends and the rest? I’ve just told you now that what we discovered in four weeks is that money meant to be paid into the federation account had been paid elsewhere. When that money can be put where it belongs, what do you do with it if not to use it to execute your projects? I’ve just given you two examples. I know that there is a new era of transparency in Nigeria today. So we are not really daunted by challenges but let Nigerians know that we have met a very bad situation on ground. It’s not an excuse for us not to perform, though. We do little things but people are not appreciative of them; small drops become a river. Your party promised to fight corruption but it seems this government is satisfied with having people return parts of their loots. Who is prosecuting them as Nigerians are waiting for the fight against corruption to start? It has started already. The laws have been there; they were not just applied. How come that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has suddenly woken up? Most of the cases that are now being tried had been on before we came to power. About a week ago, we were told that a former governor had to forfeit so many assets to the state. Now, we have seen a new EFCC. We have seen a new Code of Conduct Tribunal. Things are moving, the Buhari spirit is there. Buhari is not a judge, he can’t jail anybody. Let the system and the institutions work; that is all we are saying. Don’t you think that Buhari’s aloofness has come back to haunt him and the party considering the National Assembly crisis? All I will tell you about the National Assembly is that we are working towards resolving it. The party has a crisis on its hands and it is working towards resolving it. What about the alleged rift between Buhari and a chieftain of the party, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu? Some people somewhere are feeding a lot of stories to the world about a perceived rift between Asiwaju and President Buhari and I can tell you that it doesn’t exist. There is mutual respect between the two leaders. When you are in politics and there is nothing to write about, people will write about all kinds of things. But you surely can’t deny that there is a Northern agenda to cut down Tinubu’s influence in the party which manifested in the National Assembly crisis? That is absolute bunkum. You see in APC, we don’t think in terms of North, South, West, East, no. The whole of Nigeria fought for the victory. It’s a national mandate and it cannot be reduced to an ethnic or regional mandate by anybody for whatever interest. I’m a member of the party’s National Working Committee and I don’t think in terms of North, West, East or South, no. When we were fighting for this mandate, we sought everybody’s support, we can’t get there now and start saying it’s a Northern mandate or a Southern mandate. People say the APC leadership should be ashamed for making an issue out of the National Assembly crisis when in 2011, the APC supported former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, against the directive of the Peoples Democratic Party. Yet, the PDP let it go. I think you are comparing apples with oranges. It’s not the same thing. They all disobeyed party directives, what is different in that? Leave us to resolve the issue. I can assure you that the party will resolve the issue. So when can we expect the list of ministerial appointments which the APC failed to use the two months it had before inauguration to prepare for? When you set up a transition committee to go and give you an agenda and restructure government, you have to wait for that transition committee to come back before appointing ministers. I remember that the committee did recommend reducing the number of ministries. So supposing the President had nominated 29 ministers and the committee says you should have only 19, what happens to the other 10? So we have to wait. There is so much importance attached to nominations by the public and less attached to governance and the workings of the government. But again, we can assure you that sooner than later, key appointments will be made including those of ministers. But how will the President deliver on his promises and his party’s manifestoes when the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, and his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, don’t belong to the same caucus? I have said it here that I would rather not comment on National Assembly crisis. Some experts still wonder why this government failed to consider the negative effects of pumping so much money into the economy with the bailout, one of which is inflation and the Naira slump. Did the APC-led government overlook this? Look at the exponential effects on the economy. People have more money to buy more goods; the manufacturer will produce more and employ more people. But for God’s sake, we are talking about human beings. We are not talking about statistics or numbers. We are giving people a lifeline, people who had no source of income for nine months. Their relations have been borrowing, but when we now created a lifeline for them, people are complaining. I think the essence of government is to take care of the welfare of its people, which is what this government has done.

Boko Haram has brought untold misery – UK

The British government said on Friday that the Boko Haram insurgency had brought untold misery to many people in Nigeria and in the neighbouring countries. It also condemned the recent attacks by the Boko Haram insurgents on innocent people in the North-East. In a statement by its Minister for Africa, Grant Shapps, the British government condemned the appalling attacks which had killed over 100 persons during the celebration of Eid el-Fitr. Shapps said, “I am horrified by the attacks in North-East Nigeria over the last two days. Over 100 people have been killed including in an attack targeting Muslim worshippers during Eid Al-Fitr. My thoughts and sympathies are with the victims and their families. “Boko Haram terrorist attacks in Nigeria and in the wider region have brought untold misery and suffering to people of all faiths and backgrounds. The UK remains unwavering in our resolve to support Nigeria and its neighbours in their fight against terrorism.”

why i invited kardashain~darey art alade

In a recent meeting with journalists in Lagos, popular singer, Dare Art-Alade, spoke about Kim Kardashian and other matters, CHUX OHAI writes Two years after Darey – real name Dare Art-Alade – invited popular American reality TV star, Kim Kardashian, to co-host his ‘Love like a movie’ St. Valentine’s Day concert in Lagos, some Nigerians have not stopped talking about it. At different times, Darey himself made efforts to defend his decision to make Kim a part of the show. He has also tried to correct certain wrong notions about the actress and what she does for a living. In a recent meeting with journalists, held in Lagos to announce the arrival of two singles from his forthcoming album titled ‘Naked’, the popular singer found himself, once more, under pressure to explain why he brought her to Nigeria. He said, “I invited Kim Kardashian because people talk about her. So, bringing her here was purely a business decision. People say she is popular for no reason, but I always tell them that she has some talents. “She is famous in her own right for some reasons. Apart from the fact that she is a stylist. She has a cosmetics and clothing line, too. Whether you like those talents or not and whether you like what she is doing or not, it does not matter. She is doing it, regardless of what you think or not. Personally, I appreciate people with that kind of mindset.” When asked how he sometimes felt after seeing nude photographs of the reality TV star displayed in the social media, Darey replied that he would keep his opinion to himself. But he went on, “She didn’t take her clothes off when I brought her here. Her coming was to play a certain role, which she did effortlessly. Some people that didn’t understand her full job description would have said that she stayed for only five minutes or so. Why would somebody come for five minutes? “She spent about a day here and gave exclusive interviews. I think Gbemi on The Beat interviewed her. Could she have done that in five minutes? But then, I don’t think we promoted her as everybody’s role model when we brought her. We simply said the red carpet would be co-hosted by Kim Kardashian.” The singer said it was unfair that people delighted in picking on the lady just because they disliked her. Darey also described his new singles, ‘Pray for me’ and ‘Asiko Laye’, the first two to be released from ‘Naked’, as special, inspirational and different from his previous works. While the first song features the Soweto Gospel Choir, ‘Asiko Laye’ is the product of a collabo with rapper Olamide. Giving assurance to his fans that a duet with Olamide did not imply he would deviate from his usual style, he said, “This is just a collaboration between the rapper and me. It is about blending two different works together. I just wanted to see what the final sound would look like, whether one would, hopefully, not overshadow the other or not. Besides, I am a big fan of Olamide right from the good old days to ‘Shakiti bobo’. We have even worked on some things before that nobody heard.” The singer, contrary to what many fans were thinking, said he was not worried that the constant switches from ballards to other forms would affect the quality of his music. “The joy you get when you see people appreciating your work is indescribable. I have been to many places around the country, performing my songs. The kind of reactions I have received from fans, whether I was performing or not, have been encouraging.” Acknowledging the resurgence of soulful music in Nigeria, he urged Nigerians to listen to other kinds of music, especially the ones that could get the audience thinking. He said, “I think we have to make the kind of music that will appeal to people’s emotions. And we are all emotional, whether you like it or not. With just five per cent of the Nigerian population listening to my music, I am okay with that. The important thing here is to stick to your guns. Sooner or later, people will accept you for who you are.” But he dismissed the notion that Nigeria had a proper music industry. “We can’t call ourselves a music industry when we are listening to only one kind of music. Music is very diverse. There is classical music, for example. Some young artistes that were my classmates at music school are playing classical music. But the market in Nigeria will not allow me to do the same. The truth is that we are on a journey and we must not feel as if we have arrived until we tackle some of the issues affecting contemporary music in the country,” he noted. Regarding how he manages to get by without releasing an album, Darey said, “Music is what I do. But without releasing an album, I still perform at events. They may not be commercial, but you have to realise that there is also a variety.” http://www.konga.com/?k_id=martinyjoe

Star Wars themed Amy Schumer GQ shoot 'not approved'

The Star Wars team have said they did not approve GQ magazine's photo shoot featuring comedian Amy Schumer in suggestive poses with C-3PO and R2-D2. "Lucasfilm & Disney didn't approve, participate in or condone the inappropriate use of our characters in this manner," said a post on the official Star Wars Twitter feed. Star Wars fans had called the photoshoot "distasteful" and "lame". The front cover of American GQ features Schumer sucking C-3PO's finger. Inside the magazine Schumer also appears in the back of a cab with Chewbacca, C-3PO and Yoda, dancing with stormtroopers and is pictured in bed with R2-D2 and C-3PO. She is dressed as the character Princess Leia, who was originally played by Carrie Fisher. null The Trainwreck and Inside Amy Schumer actress was chosen as American GQ's cover star for its August comedy issue, saluting her as "the funniest woman in the galaxy". On Thursday the comedian was nominated for eight Emmy Awards for her Comedy Central series Inside Amy Schumer, including lead actress in a comedy series and the writing and directing comedy categories. 'Lame' The comment from Lucas Film and Disney came in response to tweets from disgruntled Star Wars fans. One wrote, "I can't believe @Disney and @starwars are allowing @GQMagazine to do this DISTASTEFUL #starwars spread shame on all of you". Another agreed, "This is the lamest thing I've seen in a while." null Inside Amy Schumer - a mix of sketches and stand-up - was nominated for eight Emmy Awards this week The new Star Wars film The Force Awakens - one of the highlights of the recent Comic-Con festival in San Diego - is set for release on 18 December. It is the first in a new series of films in the sci-fi franchise. Schumer is currently promoting a film of her own - Trainwreck, directed by Judd Apatow and co-starring Saturday Night Live star Bill Hader. The comedy is released in US cinemas this weekend.

samsung galaxy j1

Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 gallery Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1 Samsung Galaxy J1

lumia 435 dual sim

Microsoft Lumia 435 Microsoft Lumia 435 Microsoft Lumia 435 gallery Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Dual SIM Microsoft Lumia 435 Microsoft Lumia 435 MORE PICTURES Released 2015, March 134.1g, 11.7mm thickness Microsoft Windows Phone 8.1 8GB storage, microSD card slot 3.1% 1,676,971 hits 55 Become a fan 4.0" 480x800 pixels 2MP 480p 1GB RAM Snapdragon 200 1560mAh Li-Ion Review 360° view Pictures Compare Opinions Network Technology GSM / HSPA Launch Announced 2015, January Status Available. Released 2015, March Body Dimensions 118.1 x 64.7 x 11.7 mm (4.65 x 2.55 x 0.46 in) Weight 134.1 g (4.73 oz) SIM Micro-SIM Display Type Capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors Size 4.0 inches (~59.6% screen-to-body ratio) Resolution 480 x 800 pixels (~233 ppi pixel density) Multitouch Yes Platform OS Microsoft Windows Phone 8.1, planned upgrade to Windows 10 Chipset Qualcomm MSM8210 Snapdragon 200 CPU Dual-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 GPU Adreno 302 Memory Card slot microSD, up to 128 GB Internal 8 GB, 1 GB RAM Camera Primary 2 MP, 1600 x 1200 pixels Features Geo-tagging Video 480p@30fps Secondary VGA, 480p Sound Alert types Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones Loudspeaker Yes 3.5mm jack Yes Comms WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, hotspot Bluetooth v4.0, A2DP GPS A-GPS, GLONASS Radio FM radio with RDS USB microUSB v2.0 Features Sensors Accelerometer, proximity Messaging SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM Browser HTML5 Java No - MP3/WAV/AAC player - MP4/H.264 player - OneDrive (30 GB cloud storage) - Document viewer - Video/photo editor Battery Li-Ion 1560 mAh battery Stand-by Up to 504 h (2G) / Up to 504 h (3G) Talk time Up to 21 h (2G) / Up to 11 h 45 min (3G) Music play Up to 64 h Misc Colors Black, White, Green, Orange SAR US 0.81 W/kg (head) 0.53 W/kg (body) SAR EU 0.58 W/kg (head) 0.54 W/kg (body) Price group 2/10 Tests Battery life Endurance rating 58h

Ramadan offers chance to oppose extremism

During the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Muslims reflect on their faith as they conduct their daily fast from dawn until dusk in the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, which marks the anniversary of the revelation of the Islamic holy book, the Koran. The end of the month of fasting is marked by Eid al-Fitr, which means the "festival of the breaking of the fast", which continues over several days. The first day of Eid starts in the UK this Friday, beginning with morning prayers, followed by feasting and celebrations with family and friends. Ramadan is also a time for charitable deeds, which for some Muslims in the US this year has meant helping raise funds to rebuild black churches in the American South that have been devastated by fire. Imam Zaid Shakir, an Islamic scholar at California's Zaytuna College, explained why on one of the fundraising pages. He wrote that the US Muslim community understood "the climate of racially inspired hate and bigotry that is being reignited in this country. "We want to let our African American brothers and sisters know that we stand in solidarity with them during this dark hour." Community division However, that sense of some communities dividing increasingly along ethnic or religious lines is one that has also been felt in parts of Europe and the UK, not least as the self-styled Islamic State (IS) and other extreme Islamist groups continue to dominate the headlines, exacerbating concerns among non-Muslims over what Islam means for some of its younger followers today. Islamic State has been adept at spreading its extremist message Some Islamic clerics around the world have used Ramadan as a chance to reflect publicly on how to reform the religious discourse within Islam to keep up with the challenges of 21st Century life, and to oppose extremism. In Egypt and elsewhere, some Islamic scholars have discussed ways to renew the interpretation of the Koran, while in the United Arab Emirates, a popular American scholar of Islam warned that renewal was needed within Islam. Others stressed the necessity for a greater emphasis on tolerance of difference, mercy and mutual respect. Those efforts to discuss religious reform to a faith followed by around 1.6 billion people, or a quarter of the world's population, are aimed in part at ensuring that extreme interpretations of Islamic tradition do not gain a greater following. Militant violence has escalated in the Middle East and elsewhere with the spread of IS. Slick online propaganda appeals to some Muslims in Europe - and to rather more young people in countries such as Tunisia or Saudi Arabia - some of whom are attracted to its austere interpretation and claim to be the "real" Islam. Gentle reforms In January, the Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi called for a revolution in Islam, saying that outdated interpretations had made the Muslim world a source of destruction. However, others do not want a revolution within Islam but reinterpretations, or gentler reforms. Speaking in Abu Dhabi, American scholar Sheikh Hamza Yusuf urged a return to the core tenet of mercy in Islam, describing the religion as a house that had been neglected and was in need of renovation. "The water taps aren't working, the plumbing's not working. The house is in disarray," he told the Associated Press. "You don't destroy it, you don't set it aside. You renovate it." He said Muslims should not oppose even strong reforms, nor feel that everything needed to be changed. "Because of the urgency of the situation, some people are waking up... and thinking we better do something," he said. Difficult times Efforts to reform Islam are not new, and not everyone thinks they are necessary. But many Muslims would agree that these are difficult times for Islam. For centuries, Islamic theologians, legal experts, poets and scientists advanced not only their understanding of how Islam applied to their times, but also led global philosophical and legal debates, and discoveries in medicine and the sciences. In the UK, a new Muslim video on-demand channel that launched earlier this year, focusing on Islamic life across the globe, hopes to aid better understanding of Islam in the 21st Century. Alchemiya is the brainchild of two British Muslims, and offers documentaries and entertainment. After the end of Ramadan, the channel will be looking for fresh funding to help it expand for a global Muslim audience. Ajmal Masroor is one of the founders of Alchemiya London-based imam Ajmal Masroor, one of its co-founders, says its aim is to celebrate Islam. "Unfortunately, Islamic hatred has become very fashionable or acceptable today, because the media has portrayed it in this way. "Every time you switch on the television, it's something about Muslims or something about terrorism, and the two have become synonymous for some people. "Our channel isn't a reaction to that - our channel is a challenge to it." The channel's appeal is that unlike many other Muslim channels, it won't focus on news or politics, but seeks to serve a new demographic: global urban Muslims (Gummies) - the growing Muslim middle-classes. Alchemiya's Navid Akhtar believes there is a real gap in that market, not least in Muslim majority countries such as Malaysia or Indonesia. "They are really interested in what it means to be a Muslim dealing with the realities of 21st Century Islam. "When I go there, they say, 'Wow, you're from London, you Muslims are so cool,' with the kind of creativity that comes out of London, the ideas we have here. There's an enormous demand for products coming out of Muslim London." Ramadan: During Ramadan Muslims endeavour to adhere to three types of worship: Sawm (fasting), Zakat (charity) and Salat (praying). It was in the ninth month in AD610 when Muslims believe the Koran was first revealed by God to his messenger on Earth, the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims decided this event should be commemorated with a period dedicated to extra worship. The key tenet became fasting. The first fast is believed to have occurred in AD624 when the Prophet Muhammad persuaded the residents of Medina, in modern-day Saudi Arabia, to forgo their food and give it to poor worshipers who had followed him from Mecca. Muslims try to purify body and mind during Ramadan. Besides fasting from dawn to sunset, Muslims also abstain from sex, smoking and avoid gossip to concentrate on personal reflection and prayer. When the sun has set, the fast is broken with friends and family, in a ceremony known as the iftar. After 30 days the end of Ramadan ushers in a festival known as Eid al-Fitr. This is when Muslims can collectively end their period of fasting with a celebratory party Ramadan: What do I need to know? The idea is for Alchemiya to show a different side of the modern Muslim world - one seen all too rarely on the news today. For Navid Akhtar, this Ramadan has been a chance to establish a broader understanding with friends of what their faith means to Muslims today, in the West and elsewhere. Navid Akhtar wants to go beyond the stereotypes of Islam "Growing up, Ramadan was a very private affair for my family as immigrants from Pakistan, living in east London. My life was split into two between school, friends and my traditional Pakistani family, and never the twain did meet," he says. "Thirty-five years later, what has changed? I now have close relationships with non-Muslim friends who are really aware of what Ramadan means to me. "One of my partners at Alchemiya, David, has been fasting all month, despite being resolutely atheist, for no other reason than a human desire for empathy. "He has called it his 'non-Muslim Ramadan' and it's a great example of how we in the UK are finding ways to understand each other, and go beyond the stereotypes."