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http://ift.tt/2qemAG8 Brazilian singer Elza Soares performs at the Town Hall theater on May 19, 2017 in New York. KENA BETANCUR / AFP The emaciated teenager from a Rio favela, dressed in her mother’s clothes held tight by pins, showed up in 1953 at a radio studio. She wanted to sing in return for cash to buy medicine for her sick baby. “And what planet do you come from?” the program’s host, famous composer Ary Barroso, asked mockingly to the audience’s laughter. “From Planet Hunger,” the teenager, Elza Soares, replied, bringing silence to the crowd. Minutes later, after hearing Soares sing, the astonished conductor declared the birth of a star. “I haven’t forgotten that exchange. I can’t forget it,” Soares, now 79, told AFP. “I felt sad. I was a poor girl who was poorly dressed. I just sang well,” said Soares, her voice hollow after a life full of pain as well as success. Soares spoke by telephone before singing Friday in New York at Town Hall as part of the Red Bull Mus...

http://ift.tt/2pYYwIu DSS The Senate yesterday endorsed the move by its committee on Federal Character, to investigate the alleged lopsided recruitment recently carried out by the Department of State Services (DSS). The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Federal Character, Senator Tijjani Abubakar Kaura (APC Zamfara North), had during plenary declared that his committee based on petitions received from concerned Nigerians on recent recruitment carried out by DSS, resolved to probe the exercise considered to be highly lopsided. He said the probe would go a long way in restoring the confidence of Nigerians in the principles of federal character required for such exercise on the basis of equity, justice and fairness. Accordingly, the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, gave the Committee the nod to go ahead with the probe and update it with its findings. Reports from the alleged lopsided recruitment exercise carried out by DSS last month revealed wide disparity in state-by-stat...

http://ift.tt/2p73O3R The workers had reportedly booed Senate President of Senate Bukola Saraki and the Speaker, House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, during the country’s May Day at the Eagle Square, Abuja. Moved by yesterday’s protest by the organised labour, the House of Representatives has called for a review of the national minimum wage.Members of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) had collectively asked for an upward review to N56, 000 and above. The Chairman, Committee on Labour, Employment and Productivity, Ezenwa Onyewuchi, moved the motion for an immediate review.Contributing, Nnena Ukeje said unless the different amounts demanded by workers were harmonised, it would be difficult to pass the minimum wage bill. The workers had reportedly booed Senate President of Senate Bukola Saraki and the Speaker, House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, during the country’s May Day at the Eagle Square, Abuja. In the motion, Onyewuchi extolled the res...

http://ift.tt/2oWvyMz Chief Executive Officer, of Arik Air, Capt. Roy Ilegbodu, became a strong lifeline for the survival of the company, even as it has currently returned to operational stability. The intervention by the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), with a fresh fund of N1.5 billion, according to the Chief Executive Officer, of Arik Air, Capt. Roy Ilegbodu, became a strong lifeline for the survival of the company, even as it has currently returned to operational stability. He also said the takeover of Arik Air by AMCON was timely, as the company was headed to collapse sooner than expected.The huge non-performing loans, accumulated workers’ salary arrears, lack of spare parts for aircraft servicing, high level balkanisation of existing aircraft and declining customer confidence due to cancellations were about to undo the country’s largest carrier. Ilegbodu, while speaking to finance journalists in Lagos, yesterday, noted that a major pillar of aviation busines...