The March 2016 issue of Playboy marks the magazine’s first-ever issue that has zero nudity in it. Playboy CEO Scott Flanders’ October announcement that Playboy would no longer feature nudes was met with shock across the Internet, but, true to his word, here’s the centerfold from next month’s issue — Miss March, Dree Hemingway:
Credit: Cosmopolitan
The Federal Government may have concluded arrangements to raise N155.39 billion ($780 million) in Treasury Bills (T-Bills), with maturities ranging from three months to one year on December 16.
The Central Bank of Nigeria said the T-Bills programme would include a N20 billion worth of three-month paper; N25 billion for six-month paper; and N110.39 billion for the one-year bills, through the Dutch Auction System.
The Dutch auction system is a method of pricing shares/market instruments, whereby the price of the security offered is lowered until there are enough bids to sell all the quantities offered, which must be then sold at that price.
Already, traders have expressed optimism that the instrument will be oversubscribed, while yields are likely to drop further from the last auction of short-dated paper by next week, in tandem with the prevailing trend in the secondary (retail) market.
Last week, the Debt Management Office, auctioned N129 billion in bonds, Indeed, followed by a N50 billion local currency denominated bond due December 9.
The bonds auction was a reopening of previously issued papers- February 2020 (N30 billion) and March 2024 (N20 billion).
Meanwhile, the naira fell two percent to a low of N251 to the dollar in the parallel market yesterday, CBN reduced its dollar supplies to bureaux de change operators due to incomplete documentation, with the suspension of over 1800 that were affected.
Credit: Guardian
In a wide-ranging and exclusive interview with Al Jazeera English’s flagship current affairs show, ‘UpFront’, Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari pledged to defeat Boko Haram by December but also acknowledged he would be willing to negotiate with the group to secure the release of the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls.
“They have to prove to us that they are alive, they are well, and then we can…negotiate with them,” President Buhari told ‘UpFront’ host Mehdi Hasan. “We said it and we meant it. If we are satisfied that the girls are alive.”
When asked whether he would offer financial payments, or a prisoner release, to Boko Haram in return for the girls, Buhari did not rule out either option. “Well it depends on the negotiations with the leadership of Boko Haram.”
The president has pledged to defeat Boko Haram by the end of 2015 and told Hasan: “As soon as the rainy season comes, which is by the end of the year […] Boko Haram will virtually be out of their main stronghold and that will be the end of it [….] Attacks by Boko Haram on townships, on military installations, will certainly stop.”
If Boko Haram isn’t defeated by December, however, Buhari said he “will not resign”.
“I will be determined to stay and fight it out.”
The president claimed not to have seen the Amnesty International report from June 2015, ‘Nigeria: Stars on their shoulders: Blood on their hands’, in which the human-rights group documented abuses, torture and unlawful killings by the Nigerian armed forces and urged the government to prosecute a group of officers and senior commanders. “I haven’t received that report personally,” said Buhari. “If I get those documents… I assure you that I will take action as Commander in Chief.”
In the past, Buhari has been quoted as saying he supports “the total implementation of the sharia in the country” but he told ‘UpFront’ that “Nigerian law does not allow for” so-called sharia punishments, such as stonings and amputations, adding: “I cannot change it. I haven’t been voted by [a] majority of Nigerians to change Nigerian constitution.”
Asked about his record as a military dictator in the mid-1980s, and the alleged human-rights abuses which occurred on his watch, Buhari said: “If there is any injustice that can be proved against me when I was there, I will gladly apologize.” The president refused, however, to concede that his now-notorious ‘war against indiscipline’ in the 1980s featured any such “injustice”.
Read More: aljazeera
A county clerk in Kentucky has again refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, invoking her religious beliefs and God’s authority, this time in defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling against her.
On Tuesday morning, Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis’ office denied the licenses to at least two couples. At first, Davis was in her office with the door closed and blinds drawn. But she emerged a few minutes later, telling the couples and the activists gathered there that her office is continuing to deny the licenses under God’s authority.
Davis asked David Moore and David Ermold, a couple who has been rejected four times by her office, to leave. They refused, surrounded by reporters and cameras.
“We’re not leaving until we have a license,” Ermold said.
“Then you’re going to have a long day,” Davis told him.
From the back of the room, Davis’ supporters said: “Praise the Lord! … Stand your ground.”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to intervene in the case, leaving Davis no legal grounds to refuse to grant licenses to gay couples. A district judge could now hold her in contempt, which can carry steep fines or jail time.
Davis has steadfastly refused to issue the licenses, saying her deeply held Christian beliefs don’t let her endorse gay marriages.
Read More: AP
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Lagos on Tuesday said it would issue certificates of return to elected members of the Lagos State House of Assembly on Wednesday.
Femi Akinbiyi, the Head ,Public Affairs, INEC Lagos, said the event would hold at the commission’s office in Yaba. “We will issue certificates of return to all the 40 elected members of the House of Assembly in Lagos.We have put everything in place to ensure that the event is successful.
We want to urge supporters of elected officers to stay away from the venue as the exercise is not meant for them,’’ he said. The commission had on April 16 presented certificates of return to the governor-elect and the deputy-governor-elect alongside elected senators and house of representatives members of the incoming 8th National Assembly from Lagos State.
Credit: NAN
